by Kali Altsoba
“Attack imminent!” When the guns stop pounding on the bunker lid and move behind to wash over armtrak parks, ammo dumps, and supply units and trenches in the immediate rear, Joachim pushes his grumbling and lethargic platoon to its battle station on the surface, behind the black ramparts. ‘They think it’s another damn drill or false alarm. I think so too.’
They ride up 100 meters in an armored elevator, then break free of the blast hatch to lope 20 meters topside up a steep ramp. After that, he leads 40 fighters down a long, rightward zag toward a battery of presited rapidos and side straddling firing steps for marine shooters. They immediately come upon an angry major. “Move it lieutenant! Get your platoon up to the wall. See that shadow on the edge of the horizon? That’s the enemy!”
So this isn’t practice? HQ’s threat warning is right. Waves of Rikugun are on the way, loping across Dark Territory with red combat eyes and warm masers and murderous intent. Bounding over a shattered night landscape searingly bright in spots amidst the larger blackness, as mortars throw up frantic, artificial morning lights in the form of lustrous and spectrum strobe parachute flares.
The warning sounds and flashes yet again, carrying to every squad, platoon, company, battalion and divisional com link. Second Platoon suddenly gets urgent, sprinting the final fifty paces to its active combat station, a heavily armored rapido gunpit with flanking fire steps. ‘It’s real! Here they come!’
The thought makes Joachim’s knees rubber. He stumbles twice before reaching the gunpit and racing up the enfilade steps. He recovers, puts the platoon in position along the shooting line, checks weapons are loaded, safeties off and humming ready, and takes his command place beside the twin rapido. He’s worried about his wobbly knees. ‘Will my legs betray me?’
Quaking with anticipation, Joachim looks over his first real battlefield. His left hand is trembling badly and he has an oddly hollow feeling somewhere in the back of his stomach as he engages the trench periscope. He turns his head to one side and heaves up his early breakfast. That helps. Even if he vomit splashes half-digested powdered eggs and black coffee on the youngest and nearest marine. She doesn’t notice. She’s white with fear, unaware her helmet is not quite right atop her wavy and escaping blonde hair. He reaches over and raps it hard. She startles, looks at him blankly with eighteen-year old doe eyes. Then she realizes, pushes her hair inside and straps the helmet on right. She steps up to the gun platform to work the rapido. By luck, good or bad, today is her turn as shooter on the crew.
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘What a perfect face!’
‘What a perfect body!’
‘Such clear, pale and perfect skin!’
‘Why did I never notice her before?’
Because all your senses are heightened in this moment. You’re hyper vigilant, hyper aware. Better pay attention to the enemy and not the blonde girl, or you’ll get hyper aroused and hyper fucking die.
Hey! You still there?
Wake the fuck up!
Ignore the damn girl!
The hollow feeling leaves, replaced by bilious emptiness and a bitter yellow taste in his mouth. His knees stop folding. He peeks the periscope over the parapet and sucks in a hard breath as he sees the enemy. A mass of gray-green is moving in the distance, getting a little bigger with each passing second. ‘Glide troops.’
Alarms are ringing overhead. They come from screeching speakers built into the three meter high parapet. The whole scared platoon, one of hundreds rushing into position behind the black wall, crouches or stands on the firing steps. It waits under a brilliant, artificial dawn made by starburst parachute shells fired high over the edge of DT to illuminate the incoming attack. ‘What else? Bots!’
Joachim was wrong about the purpose of the barrage, but he’s right about the heavy guns. The shell fall hitting all around is coming from medium and short range tubes alone. The heaviest guns are concentrated and waiting at the center of the main attack front, not here in his dreary northern backwater. They’ll hold fire for days, as Shōshō a Oetkert waits for his counterpart, General Lian Sòng, to take the poison bait and move her reserves and ARGs to meet the first of two immense diversions now starting on the wide flanks of his brilliance.
‘It’s cold comfort to be proven right.’
‘Small caliber shells will kill you just as dead.’
‘Still, I’m glad the really big guns aren’t here.’
‘You can’t test your courage against artillery.’
This is the first strategic diversion, an assault on the wide north flank of the central schwerpunkt, right here where Joachim Suri worries what kind of man he is while swallowing back bits of powdered eggs and bile. Right here, where shaky, ill led, utterly unreliable 22nd Marine, the most dismal division in the ACU, sits on the key attack spot along the vulnerable rim of The Veranda.
In two days, a second assault will cross farther south, attacking through the seasonally stormy region known to locals as Tornado Alley. That’s where Jedidiah Haig died last year, in Little Gastown, at the end of the scope of a long gun held by the elusive Specter. That’s where Susannah Page and Ava Mack and the now tough and veteran Enthusiastics are refitting and resting, not expecting imminent action. Just like the 22nd Marine wasn’t expecting an attack this morning, up north. Tornado Ally is designated ‘quiet sector’ by MI. Just like The Veranda.
“Can you hear that? What the..?”
“Quiet sector, like bloody hell it is!”
“Someone in MI needs to lose his fucking job.”
Joachim yells to 2nd Platoon: “Get ready! Here they come!”
Dingo
The enemy’s advance is astonishing. Frenzied infantry bound across the plain nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, masers low-and-level and barking. Front ranks are firing wildly, without stopping to raise weapons to aim. Joachim hears and feels several blasts smatter against the tthree meter high carbyne shield of his rapido position. Drone mechs are spaced every 50 meters among the charging troops. Rikugun is putting a lot of hard resources into the attack. Already the drones are spitting bright red and green fire from gatling lasers. The dying starts.
Six klics away, or less, he sees a second dark cloud of motion moving over the horizon. It’s parallel rows of hovering Mammoths, Mastodons, and Elephants. The armtraks are flying low, getting ready to hit the ground and go tracked for a wild, dirt hurling final charge. ‘What the hell is armor doing at the rear? RIK is reversing all its known tactics from the first two years of the war. They're leading the assault with infantry, to save their precious machines. How do we counter? They’ll hit us with armtraks while we’re too heavily engaged with the infantry to stop them. They could blow right past us.’
He’s right. Rikugun has decided the job of the expensive, heavy armor is to move through and exploit gaps punched in the thin blue line by yelling, charging, murdering, expendable infantry. Joachim may be almost a washout, but he’s well schooled enough to know this is an all out attack by a full division on just the small bit of line that he can see. Maybe a corps. Maybe more. ‘Does that mean a whole Army or Army Group is hitting us? If so, we’re on our own here. They’ll be no time or chance to reinforce. Not infantry, anyway.’
Click clack, click clack. Someone down the shooting line pops off two quick shots, reacting to the wild Rikugun shooting.
Click clack, click clack. Two more marines join in. “Steady marines. Hold your fire until you hear the ‘shoot’ command.”
He can see the enemy’s holoflags growing large, their broad green backgrounds framing the ‘Invincible Black Eagle.’ The bird of war is screeching and flapping its wings, talons forward, outreaching toward him. The nearest infantry are running straight at him, shooting wildly from the chest or hip, but so far not hitting anything really important. The drones are doing a little better. So are some of the dillos.
He was taught at OTS that this is “more than just the enemy’s tactical method. It’s his culture, son. It’s deeply rooted in the Gr
ün self-image and therefore in his way of war.”
“OK. I think I understand that. But what does that mean back at the tactical level?”
“For them, it’s all about aggression and movement, the appearance of advance and superiority and inevitability of success. Pyotr inherited this style and method from his ancestors, all the way back to the Jade Eye.”
“Imperial politics actually affects their battle tactics?”
“It’s why Rikugun likes to fire at you from real long distance while advancing. Even though shooting hand weapons at such long ranges on-the-move, while lope gliding, is mostly target ineffectual for infantry. It’s only marginally better for his gyro stabilized bot guns.”
“They do it anyway?”
“Yes. It works for their troops, up to a point. With them firing and you mostly not, until you get the order, the imbalance emboldens many ordinary Rikugun.”
“Why sir? If they don’t expect to hit much, to wound and kill their enemy?”
“They do it for psychological effect, lieutenant. To suppress your unit’s return fire and wild it when it finally comes, by overexciting and scaring your troops into hunkering down. The flags and wedge formations and all that other visible shit is part of the same effect. They want to coax fear out of our veterans who remember terrible past battles, and induce panic in our combat rookies. Lords know, we have too many of those. More every month.”
“So what do we do, sir?”
“Hold your fire until you can’t miss. There’ll be time enough to kill and maim the bastards from close range. That’s where the RIK playbook orders their infantry to switch to ‘precision shooting-for-effect.’ Well, two can play at that game. And sitting behind the black wall, you’ll do it better.”
That’s the infantry. Joachim is as confident as a combat virgin lieutenant can be that his gunpit will make some enemy pay before it’s over. But he knows the big test of the defense today arrives with the onrushing armor. Then Joachim Suri will discover if his troops succumb to “armtrak fright,” a running, panicked terror induced in infantry facing heavy armor without proper support. And he doesn’t see any Alliance armor anywhere over his rear horizon. ‘Will my platoon abandon this gunpit and run? Will I run?’ The leading edge of enemy is crossing into target range on his HUD, which is flashing red lighthouse warnings to get his attention.
“Open fire!’
‘All marines, fire!’
‘Gun crews, fire!”
Company and battalion leaders shout the orders simultaneously, up-and-down the black for nearly thirty klics. They’re keyed in by 22nd Marine’s three brigade commanders, the most competent senior officers before leadership peters out and goes full robusto at the top. All along the curving wall the 22nd’s masers throw or lace thousands of green microwave beams into the half-illuminated blackness of Dark Territory. Together, they make a chittering click clack click clack din. It’s as if tens of thousands of sparrows are dying at once.
Heavy rapidos, looped at 150 meter intervals atop the black wall, burst red plasma balls in rapid poom, poom, poom, pooms. Joachim has never seen anything so exciting. Or felt it. The brutal, murderous effects when hot plasma and searing energy beams explode living enemy flesh competes with the sheer eye fucking brilliance of the spectrum strobe flares and the red and green light-and-heat show.
‘Gods, this is terrible, terrible!’
‘Gods, this is beautiful!’
‘Gods, this is joyous!’
Joachim has the shameless thoughts all at once, as he squeezes his maser empty and reloads, pausing for just a second or two to take in the extraordinary vista of crime free mass murder that looks to him for all the worlds like the best godsdamn Constitution Day fireworks-and-laser show he’s ever seen.
The charging green infantry comes on fast, bounding at combat speed. They hop over smallish craters and into and out of larger ones with ease, leaping ahead on acoustically boosted combat boots. Rikugun commanders take little regard of casualties as red gaps are blown in the packed ranks. Nor does green clad infantry hesitate in the face of 22nd Marine’s return fire. It keeps coming, rushing, gliding, shooting, sometimes now hitting marines standing and firing back, to Joachim’s left and right. ‘What magnificent bastards!’
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The green surge keeps charging, getting closer to the black. Until it’s hit and hesitates under a sudden fall of short range mortars hailing down in tight arcs overhead. Shells explode into little mushrooms of dirt and blood and bone. Next come daisy cutters, spreading into flat disks of death that scythe down youths like late summer wheat. They promise a harvest of sorrow on Grün homeworlds.
Kaboom! Kaboom!
It’s coming from a battery firing from Joachim’s rear, at extreme short range. The first mortar rounds land 1,500 meters out in front of the gushing red rapidos and a long line of green spitting, maser rifles atop the black wall. Squat shells go nearly straight up then come almost straight down, gouging ugly carnage flowers of burnt soil and erupted flesh wherever they land. They spread a sticky, gooey, pinkish mixture in long oval petals that splay out from each smoking crater center.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
On the green clad wave of fury comes, into a wide AI animated minefield that defends the black wall. Hundreds of anti-infantry snakes lying in wait in front of First Trench slither after movement and explode in exuberant suicides. The swift snakes glint in the flash of strobes overhead, before adding their own ground level flashes of colored luminance to the horrors Joachim sees though his shooting slit.
He watches red eyes flash as one thick rattler sounds-then-coils-then-leaps, exploding into three hesitating attackers who stepped on its nest. Its AI waited for ‘the boys’ to turn and look for the sudden rattling sound, then to see their own death in cold, lethal, satanic eyes. The rattle and the colored faux eyes were chosen by weapons designers to inspire primal fear in the enemies the snakes chase after and bring down. It’s working. Men are dropping their masers and running.
Three foot long, golden colored copperheads are fleet and deadly fast. Six foot white or yellow cobras have midrange speed but so much more explosive power they don’t need to chase to catch panicked, running men. They blow poison shrapnel into backs and legs. Fourteen foot black mambas are the biggest. They wait until a squad or even whole platoon is near, then take it out with the very largest of snake detonations. Metallic bodies blow out-and-up, shrapnel slicing into unprotected, underside groins and midriff organs. Booted legs are blown off in pairs or one foot at a time. Bodies fall as screaming, wounded men tumble, rolling head-over-missing-heels like lesser runners who hit the hurdle, clattering into cartwheels of red spray and unlimbed agony.
Joachim feels a whoosh! whoosh! of hot air on his back as two, four deuce bombs fly up. Silver nozzles engage at 1,000 meters to speed ram the compact shells down onto Grün infantry, now slowing and bunching in fear of hundreds of twisting caltrops that also take off feet, and screaming meemies that saturate the precious space between the last dying snakes and the black wall. Hard burrowing, tubular mortars drop penetrator rounds that excavate perfectly circular holes in the rich Great Plains humus. Soft, yielding ground opens to them, pulling tubular warheads inside like a familiar lover’s coital embrace. Wait for it! Hold! Muffled, orgasmic explosions upthrust dead sod and dying soldiers.
Only speed and thick, explosion suffocating soil saves those who don’t break the glide. Their escape toward the black encourages most who come behind, and others who rise from hiding from the animate minefield hunters to race away from vicious AI snakes and the screaming meemies by advancing past them. They leave thousands dead or dying men around neat holes in the smoking, upturned soil of The Veranda, where the door leading into the Alliance vital rear area is hanging open. The critical moment is here at last, as it comes to some men and women in life and to every battle. A fulcrum instant of skill and chance, decider of who kills and who dies in an orgy of pure, bloody murder and impure, naked savag
ery.
Joachim knows, for it’s his moment, too. He pushes aside the slumping body of his dead rapido gunner. It’s snagged over the antler like, rectangular gun sights. It’s the girl he vomited on, whose helmet he tapped to fix. That helmet is still tied around her chin, but now it’s parted and smoking, sheered nearly off by a gatling bot that made it past the exploding snakes. Her head drops gray grubs of wounded brain around his feet. Her eyes are gone dead fish. Her pale, beautiful skin has lost all attractiveness and luster. Her body is just in his way. Already, no one wants to look at her ever again. In a few hours, she’ll start to bloat and stink. He jumps behind the twin barrels and shoots without pause, into a wild highland charge by reckless Rikugun. The edge of the green tidal surge is closing on his rampart.
