by David Poyer
Until they cowered in the mud under a furious barrage. Just like World War I.
He figured that in the end it was still going to be human against human, mediated by lead.
* * *
SOME interminable time later the ground ceased vibrating. It was still raining hard, but the shelling lifted, rumbling away into the distance. He kept his head down, trying to quiet his shaking. One more minute until he had to get up. Ten more seconds …
A sliding rush of wet dirt and pebbles, and a hand gripped his shoulder. Hector pulled down his mask and rolled over.
The company runner was a gracile, ironhearted Pfc. In civilian life Patterson was a girls’ soccer coach. She broken-field sprinted through the barrages while others cowered, wearing two sets of jelly armor and carrying nothing but a pistol and supplies for the corpsmen. Her face was orange dirt streaked by rain, and her pale eyebrows quizzical. “Hey, Sergeant. Another day in Marine paradise.”
Hector spat out grit. “Fuck you, Wombat.”
“Need a report. Battalion wants to know effectives remaining.”
“Fuck. Don’t know.”
“You’re Rampart now, Sergeant. Till they send another O.”
“I don’t know. Don’t know!”
“Secret Squirrels expect an assault. Ten to fifteen vehicles moving up the road. Heavies. Self-propelled mortars. Major wants ammo count. Effective rifles. Tac says, move up to the edge of the cliff. Don’t let them push you off 298. You’re the point up here. You gotta hold.”
That was their position. Hill 298. They were dug in on a terraced ridge, with only the hilltop above them. He muttered, “The edge? Where they’re fucking shelling?”
“They’re not shelling us now,” she pointed out.
“They will be in a minute. An assault … we need reinforcements. We need counterbattery. Comms. Ammo. Tell ’em that.”
“I heard something about a team coming up to help you.”
Hector didn’t want to get out of the hole. He wanted to cower in the mud. Away from the hydraulic knives that whickered the air. Away from the Kill Room, which was everyplace above ground level.
But he was responsible for the platoon now. A fucking E-5, and he had the platoon. “Fuck,” he grunted again, and pushed himself up.
The hill had been tangled jungle two days before. Now it was blasted-down matchstick trees and exposed rock with a coat of raw wet harrowed soil. The orange mud glittered with steel fragments and ammo casings. They were dug in on a level bench above the valley, with a fifty-meter rise behind them, then a saddle to the rear of that. Hector trudged his line, fighting hole to fighting hole. Patterson tagged behind, underhanding med packs to the corpsmen.
At Milliron’s fire team Ramos stood over a hole in the ground pasted around with a pinkish doughnut of body parts, unidentifiable except for an incredibly long spiral of intestine, glistening with moisture, and a boot with the lower leg still in it, and a skull fragment upside down like a bowl of gray goo. No, wait, there was a spinal cord, too. The air smelled of burnt explosive and boiled blood. “Direct hit,” the fire team leader said, tone dead, eyes small dark holes. He rubbed a stubbled chin over and over, like a madman locked in a trance. “No point callin’ the doc.”
“Who was it?”
“Salacia. Flynn.”
Hector remembered their faces, and where they were from, all of them. Kansas, Indiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania. The names of their girls and guys on the Wall of Shame. But he felt nothing yet. Just numb detachment. Another shell crumped upslope, blowing rocks to patter down around them. He crouched, ready to dive for the grisly hole, but the barrage he’d expected didn’t follow.
Yet. Still trailed by the runner, he crawled to the edge of the cliff. Sprawled full length, and peered over.
Not really a cliff, just a slope steep enough that no trees had grown on it, leaving bare earth and rock and bushes. Smoke blew over them from down in the valley. It was more like a canyon there, precipices combed by waterfalls. Before the war the view might have been beautiful. Two hundred meters below, a switchback was blocked with wrecked tanks and APCs. The dead lay in rows where the right flank had dug in. Some of the vehicles were still burning, and the stenches of scorched rubber, explosive, and roasting bodies seethed and marinated like the wind from hell’s mess hall.
Hector scribbled on Patterson’s pad, adding the sums with tongue clamped between his teeth, and jerked his thumb rearward. “We need comms, ammo, reinforcements,” he said again. “Tell them.”
She nodded and sprinted off into the murk. Dropping into the shell hole, he felt around in his assault pack, found one last MRE, and tore it open, staring blankly at the pieces plastered into the dirt.
Even chewing exhausted him. His jaw seemed to have lost the ability to close. Finally he gave up on the meal, since he couldn’t taste it anyway. He rolled out and snatched another peer over the edge, keeping his head low. The enemy’s snipers were dangerous out to a mile or more. They’d had their own scout sniper team until the night before, when one of the creeping mines had scrabbled up the cliff somehow and homed in on them. Hector hated the six-legged things. They moved slowly, like ticks, but never stopped. They snuggled up to you as you slept. Then chirped, so they startled you awake a quarter second before they detonated.
The chirp, that was what Hector couldn’t figure out. Unless it was just to scare the fuck out of everybody before it blew some unlucky bastard apart.
Some minutes ticked past. He kept expecting the shelling to resume, but instead it tapered off, then stopped entirely.
Around seven H&S sent up chow and ammo on a robo mule. Eggs, toast, and the nasty sausages everyone called “dicks of death.” Hector got the ammo out to the line first, then chow. The food was cold, and watery with rain, but a private brewed quadruple-strength MRE coffees. Black smoke rose in the distance, and the whump of distant explosions. But only an occasional shot echoed from the valley.
He didn’t like the silence. He kept checking his sensors. A few still worked. But nothing seemed to be coming their way yet.
* * *
NOT too much later, Patterson scampered up again to say his reinforcements were here. She brought a heavy brick of a radio, too. One of the old PRC-117s. He accepted it doubtfully, looking it over. Then got up. Leaving his Pig with the Chad, he walked to the rear to meet the new arrivals, keeping an eye out for cover on the way in case the shelling resumed. The rain had finally stopped, though. That was a plus, though it meant the smoke was heavier.
The team was in spotless Cameleons. The guy in the lead even had a crease in his trou. Their helmets looked new. Even their boots were clean. They stood erect, not crouched, and frowned down at Hector as if at a leper. He felt like one: wet, dirt-smeared, filthy, stinking, with shit staining his pants and ripped gear and hands that only stopped shaking when he held a machine gun.
Marines didn’t wear insignia in combat. “Platoon commander?” the creased guy asked, pulling a bottle of water out and extending it.
Hector uncapped it and chugged it. “Am now.” He wiped his mouth with a filthy sleeve.
“Charlie’s gearing up to hit you. Fortunately, they can’t get armor up here. We’re from Division, and we’re here to help.”
Hector nodded. He picked out a rock he could dive behind and squatted, watching. They jabbed jointed rods into the soil and stretched an IR tent, for overhead concealment, then snapped open crates. Finally they gestured him back, and the lead guy—Hector figured him for staff brass—fingered a controller.
Something buzzed, and a disk the size of a turkey platter jumped into the air. It stopped at eye level, hovering with a buzz. A camera topped a curved carapace like a horseshoe crab’s. Its lens clicked from one jarhead to the next, as if memorizing their faces. Then the thing wheeled and circled them, dipping to search each fighting hole. The grunts stared at it dully, as if nothing surprised them anymore. The flying plate seemed to wink in and out of visibility as it crossed a patch of tumb
led rock and plowed-up ground.
“The fuck’s that?” muttered Karamete.
“NASA developed it,” the Crease said loftily. “The Gamma. Charlie won’t even get in rifle range.”
“They’re what, killer drones?”
“Like your Chads. Only you don’t have to give them permission. You got OPs out?”
Hector told him they didn’t, since they were at the edge of a cliff. He shot the thing a distrustful look as it scouted their perimeter, then dipped below the dropoff. The rest of the team were deploying more. Three dozen of the things lifted into the wind, oriented themselves, and sped off. “Up and away, my pretties,” Crease said. Then, to Hector, “They look for avenues of approach that give the enemy cover. Patrol in short hops until they sense movement.”
“Then what?”
“Home and destroy. Twenty Gammas, we’ve seen them get twenty kills.”
“In combat?”
Crease looked away. “Well, not yet. Those are test and evaluation’s numbers.”
Hector wished they’d have sent up another infantry platoon instead, but maybe the things would work. He needed to walk the line again, make super sure his fire teams were set in right and what linked 7.62 he had left was redistributed. “They won’t go for us, will they?”
“They won’t hit an American.”
“How do they know?”
“They integrate uniform, weapon, facial recognition, and query your chip. No ID, facial features Asian, carrying a weapon, they take you out.” Before Hector could object he added, “I know, we’ve got friendlies without chips on the right flank. There’s an inhibit-fire line halfway down the valley. All taken care of, Lieutenant.”
“Sergeant,” Hector said.
“You kidding? Where’s your commander?”
“Out of action. So’s the platoon sergeant. That leaves me.”
The officer looked doubtful. “Well, warn your guys these things are friendly. And very expensive. We don’t want them shot down by mistake.”
Karamete said, “Will they return fire if we do?” She’d been taking a breather on a rock, listening. His assistant did that a lot, just listened. Hector didn’t mind. Shit, she’d probably get the squad next. Once he got his legs blown off like Clay, or took a shell hit, like the guys spread like birthday frosting around the rim of their fighting hole.
The staff officer said they wouldn’t, in a tone that made it clear he got a lot of stupid questions and that had been one. He handed Hector a controller, and demonstrated various screens that showed the things’ locations and how to tap into each unit’s video. Hector nodded and tucked it into his blouse.
The rain had resumed while they talked, pinging with random drops on the IR netting. Now, with a breath of cold air, it fell in earnest, quickly increasing to a downpour.
Then he heard it. “Incoming!” he yelled, and rolled for the rock he’d scoped out.
The mortars ripped across the hill from one end to the other, then back again. Deadened by the roar of the rain, the blasts sounded like the mountain was huffing deep breaths. They squeezed his lungs as he lay flat, fingers digging into the soil. Probably the self-propelled 120mm’s Tac had seen moving up. Hector fumbled with the radio, then yelled to the staff officer, who was flat on the ground, to let Higher know they were under fire. They needed counterbattery, approximate bearing two-nine-zero.
But the techs were pulling out, leaving the equipment cases littering the ridge, the gauzelike tent fluttering in the smoky breeze. Its edge dipped as it shed torrents of rain, then collapsed into a heap as the spindly rods gave way.
The shelling shifted to their flank. Hector scuttled back on hands and knees through the mud and rain, and dropped into the fighting hole in the center of his line.
The last Chad, C323, turned its oculars from the M240 to check him out, but said nothing. Rain danced on its shoulders, on its hatchet-shaped gray metal head, sparkled silver off the machine gun. Hector nodded approval. The bipod was dug in right. 323 was holding a “hand” over the open feed tray, to keep water and grit from fouling the action. The belt was laid in clear to feed. Hector tongued his tac radio, on the off chance, but all he got was the roar of multiband jamming. He tried the older radio next, but the slants were jamming that, too.
The mortars walked back toward them and he cowered. The world staggered. Curled in the mud, he hugged the robot’s curved shell. It shifted to shelter him with its torso.
A blast pressed him down in the hole and shattered the eroding mud sliding down around him. Fragments whanged off metal.
A blackness …
When he came to, water covered his face. He clawed at his mouth, but more mud filled it. He screamed into the slick cold. Then a powerful arm reached under him and pulled him up. He scrabbled at his face, scraping mud off.
From down the ridge machine-gun fire clattered. Then, amid deeper explosions, engines growled. They didn’t sound like tanks or fighting vehicles. These were higher pitched, like the dune buggies the scout snipers roared around in. He needed to see. He needed video. “We got any switchblades left?” he yelled to Karamete.
“All expended.”
He remembered then, pulled out the controller. The screen was cracked. Water slid around a blank screen. He threw it away and hunkered again as mortars thundered and lightninged behind him on the saddle. Softening up their rear, interdicting any more reinforcements and supplies.
But they weren’t getting reinforcements. Just the disks, which he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of since they’d scooted off.
The growl of motors grew, straining, revving. He hesitated, glancing at the assistant squad leader.
I’ll go, she mouthed, tilting her helmet toward the drop.
Hector hand-signaled her to stay put. He jumped up and dashed forward. The wet fabric dragged at his legs. His mud-caked boots squished at each stride. He collapsed at the edge, coughing, and clawed his way forward to peer over.
Behind him something grabbed his boot in an iron grip. When he looked back the C was right behind him, lying full length with its belly in the mud. Its oculars eyed him expressionlessly. The nictitating covers blinked every couple of seconds, wiping its lenses clear from the rain.
Between the treetops below, through streaming billows of white antitargeting smoke that filtered through the shattered forest like hair through a comb, something was moving. No, several somethings. Then, as one reared up to roll over a shell-toppled bole, he saw it clearly.
Only he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing. He squinted through the mist and rain and smoke. Why was it that in every battle it seemed to rain? Then another of the sluglike shapes crossed an open patch, approaching the hill. The smoke blew aside for a second and he finally saw one clearly, head on.
Intel was right. The Chinese couldn’t get armor up here.
But these weren’t tanks.
They were smaller than compact sedans, but larger than motorcycles. Remotely controlled, apparently. Or autonomous. The low-slung dark-green beetles ground along on wide, ridged rubber tracks. Multibarreled guns pointed here and there as antennaed turrets rotated suspiciously. They bulldozed aside trees and climbed over rocks, and the grinding of their treads on wood and stone was like the chewing of gigantic insects. They were flanked and overheaded by gray-blue quadcopters, and behind them trotted troops in Associated Powers green with camo helmet covers, carrying rifles and light machine guns and RPGs. The drones held their positions like pilot fish on sharks, swaying as sheets of windblown rain trailed between them and Hector. Their high nasal hum overscored the deeper notes of treads and engines and the unending rumble of the mortars.
A coordinated assault: fliers, troops, and the new things. But the green beetles were leading the charge. Their first wave reached the base of the slope and started up. They rocked and nearly tipped backward, but recovered and kept climbing.
As if their progress had disturbed a nest there, suddenly small gray objects darted up, weaving and dipping above the
slugs. They engaged the quads first, tongues of fire darting from the disks. A quad tilted and fell, bouncing down the slope, but the beetles still lumbered upward, occasionally firing, but mainly ignoring their mosquito-like attackers.
Then, as Hector watched, one of the disks dropped onto a turret. It clung there for a second. The machine tried to shake it off, but it detonated in a flash of light and puff of gray smoke.
The tracked vehicle emerged from the smoke, still climbing. A scar gleamed on its green painted hull, but otherwise it didn’t seem to have been harmed.
Then it noticed him. A fixture atop the hull swung up to steady on him. Instantly other turrets swung up too.
Not only had he been seen, but they were communicating. Passing information. Which meant that though the Marines had no comms and no video, Allied jamming wasn’t working on the enemy.
He pulled back from the edge as the world dazzled. A millisecond later automatic fire, 20mm or so by the sound of it, pulverized rock into powder. The edge sagged beneath him as he clawed backward. The Chad grabbed his load-bearing equipment and they rolled together back into the fighting hole.
Corporal Karamete was firing. But the boot was still hunched, shaking, gripping his rifle, but not aiming. He was muttering something over and over. A prayer, a curse … it didn’t matter. Hector slammed the recruit’s helmet into the side of the hole. “Return fire!” he screamed into the boy’s face, shaking him. “Return fire, goddamn you, or I’ll shoot your pussy fucking face myself!” He snatched the private’s rifle, racked the bolt, and thrust it back into the kid’s shaking hands.
Yet still the idiot didn’t fire. Hector slapped him again, then turned away in disgust. “Climbing the cliff!” he yelled to the fire teams. “Pass it on. Little AFVs. AP and antiarmor.” The cry went down the line, passed from mouth to mouth as the troops hastily reloaded magazines. But there were fewer voices now.
