Armored Warrior Panzerter: Eve of Battle

by T. E. Butcher

  “If I dismount a squad, they can follow you into the woods and reinforce your scouts, Jackson,” Spears offered. “We’re headed that way when this road is clear, so we can pick them up when we pass you.”

  “Alright, I’m glad you’re all capable of aiding each other, but I have one other thing to add,” Kennedy said. “The cold and clouds are staying, but the high winds and heavy snow aren’t, so keep an eye to the sky for enemy air.” They broke off into their related groups, Spears and name discussed doing some recon training together while Day, the Artillery leader, began plotting targets. This feels correct, I don’t think Blake would have done this, but he’s dead and I’m not. Not yet, anyway.

  A gray form shaped like a torpedo descended from the soupy clouds overhead. As the Pegasus dropship touched down, Reiter turned his face so the heat from the VTOL engines at the rear of the craft wouldn’t burn him. While the four engines, each paired and mounted on fin like structures on the roof of the airframe, wound down, the ramp lowered itself before Reiter.

  A line of men and women wearing armor and toting large rucksacks filed out to either side of him. When they noticed his rank on his chest, many of them greeted him, but most kept their heads down. Finally, the lines ended as one last trooper rushed out of the dropship with his head down.

  “Are you LT Webb?” Reiter asked as the man approached him. The trooper looked up when he got closer and offered his hand.

  “I am! You must be Captain Reiter!” He shouted, still a little deaf from the engines. Nearby, the scene Rieter just witnessed played out with two more dropships full of soldiers. “Sorry we took so long! It was a month and a half to get us all spun up, and then we had to wait a couple more weeks for our escorts.”

  “Escorts?” Reiter asked.

  Webb fumbled for his watch. “They’re probably an hour or so behind us, they’re moving them by truck because they didn’t want the enemy to catch a glimpse of them flying around.”

  After some of Webbs hearing had returned, Reiter led him to a waiting command car. Because of the nature of his current headquarters, they had forced Reiter to meet his new dropship platoon in the parking lot of a supermarket.

  “Let me take a guess, they gave you guys some top of the line shit because you happened to be around where they made it,” Reiter said.

  Webb flashed a toothy grin. “What? What makes you say that?” Now it was Reiter’s turn to grin.

  “Alright, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he said. It didn’t take long for the command car to pull up at the warehouse. “As soon as whatever you’re waiting on gets here, we should be ready to start planning. The mortars just got here a few hours ago.”

  Reiter stepped out of the car and smiled. Webb’s jaw dropped when he saw the Lowe being prepped for combat. “It’s not like I’ve never seen a panzerter before, but damn is that thing scary.” When Webb felt like the shock of seeing the Lowe wore off, he finally denied to show Reiter what they were waiting for.

  “Ok, that’s worth waiting a couple hours for,” he said. The images on Webb’s phone displayed a savage, shark-like gunship bristling with armaments and flying on two VTOL engines. “The armaments aren’t even the best specs, they carry two drones as well, that’s why it’s a two-seater.”

  Shaking his head, Reiter whistled. “Well, I’ll never turn down more firepower.” As he led him across the hanger floor to show him the officer’s quarters they’d made, he stopped to introduce him to Mo and Wesser.

  “Well hey there, glad to make your acquaintance ma’am, Sergeant,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed. “Ey, I remember you from the news, you’re that crazy bastard who took down like three tin-hats at Riverside.”

  With a smile, Mo raised his hands. “My sisters were on a boat like ten feet away, no way I was losing.”

  Folding her arms with a fake huff, Wesser looked at him. “You never told me your sisters were there!”

  “You didn’t ask?” Mo said.

  Webb elbowed him in the ribs. “Yea-hah, brother bear over here, I love it.”

  “You know, you look familiar too,” Mo said. Now that they stood inside and Webb had taken his helmet off, Reiter agreed. The black hair slicked to one side and pale, wide face looked like someone from a news article. “You said your name was Webb?”

  The drop trooper sighed. “Yeah, I am that Dave Webb, I helped raise those rovers from the floor of the Mariner gulf.”

  Mo clapped his hands. “That’s where I saw you! You did that and helped with the coral reef expansion project!” The other man shrugged.

  “I’m from Mars and I have a degree in Archeology, what else would I do?” He gestured to his body armor and rucksack. “Besides this.” Mo offered to take the man’s ruck, and they agreed to sit down for dinner with the rest of the leaders and get everyone up to speed. As far as Reiter concerned himself, everything was coming along nicely.

  12

  While Meyer collected her notes for the call, Irving found herself unable to focus. Woody Pete is planning something. Up to something. What is he doing? Did he let himself get captured? I doubt Kennedy butt stroking him across the face was part of his plan.

  “Irving! Do you have that spreadsheet? The one for ammo count by Battalion,” Meyer said. Irving’s cheeks flushed red.

  “I apologize, Comrade Colonel, It’s right here,” she replied. Meyer took the spreadsheet without another word. After eyeing it over a couple times, she set it down, took Irving by the hand, and led her to a corner of the room.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered. As far as Irving knew, Meyer was the only person on the planet to whisper to get her point across. “You haven’t been right since we took that partisan prisoner, I know Chaney put a non-executable tag on him, but maybe he can have an accident…”

  “I would very much appreciate that,” Irving said. “Something isn’t right about him, how we got him, or what he’s said since coming here.”

  Meyer gave her a warm smile and patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll take care of it, after this conference call, now if you can set up the host we can-” She stopped cold.

  That’s weird, is someone whistling? Fortunately for Irving, Meyer recognized the sound. The older woman struck her like a speeding car and dove under a table with her. Then someone tossed the world into a blender.

  She tried to run. Tried to crawl away. However, the amazon woman with her held her firmly on the floor. Irving screamed, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. She lost it in an orchestra of destruction.

  When the world began to still, her head rang. Everything rang. The walls of their wing of town hall had been blown away. Thick smoke drifted into gray skies outside the range of her vision.

  Blinking, she realized her eyes stung. She felt something in her leg. As she tried to sit up and look, Meyer pushed her back to the floor.

  She couldn’t hear her commander’s words, but she knew she didn’t want her to look. Meyer signaled to her to “be still” and she tied a tourniquet made from her sleeve onto Irving's leg. Then she darted off, possibly seeking help, possibly establishing order, likely both.

  Irving closed her eyes. She worked her mouth and felt her ears. Her left, the one facing the blast, bled while the other didn’t. As her hearing slowly came back to her, she heard cries of pain and shots all around her. Beneath her pain, perhaps as a method of preserving her sanity, her tactical mind kicked into gear.

  Why did they hit us with artillery? How did they know we were here? Are we about to receive a follow up attack? She glanced over to a broken monitor. In its cracked reflection, she could see over the fallen wall next to her. She also saw the long piece of rebar pinning her leg to the ground.

  Irving screamed, jerking her head away as to not look any more when the colder part of her mind took over. The damage was limited to a few areas, how could they conduct such a precise bombardment on our control centers.

  Turning her face back towards the sky, she nearly screamed again. Until a large meaty h
and clamped over her mouth. “Sh,” Woody Pete hissed. “Don’t freak out, miss Ivy Irving, I won’t do anything to you.” He leaned closer. “Not yet, anyway.”

  He stomped on her injured leg’s ankle, crushing it and causing her to cry out. Pete laughed and leaned back over her. “I just want you to know, your life was in my hands right now.” And then he stood up and left.

  “Hey civilian!” A guard cried. “What are you-ack!” Irving heard a faint yet sickening snap and a thud. She waited for the man to return with a weapon. A knife, a gun, anything that could finish her off. She closed her eyes and accepted her fate.

  But he never came back. Meyer returned with a team of engineers who cut the rebar, allowing her to be slipped off and carried onto a stretcher. With as much strength as she could muster, she grabbed Meyer’s hand.

  “They knew,” she gasped. “Comrade Meyer, they knew where the command center was, our ammo depot, our field kitchen, I think Woody Pete let them know somehow.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I wanted him captured, my plan brought him here, this is all my fault.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

  Meyer held her hand tighter. “You need to heal, and let your head clear,” she said. “But mark my words, you will be safe.”

  As he leaned over the railing of the upper section of the warehouse, Reiter kept a close eye on Gold Platoon preparing for the mission. The “hanger” floor was just large enough for them to simulate their mission: Occupy a few homes and set charges in the surrounding sewers. Squad and team leaders walked their soldiers through each phase of their own plan, occasionally pausing to ask an individual soldier what them or a teammate would be doing or where someone would be.

  When he walked away, he caught a glimpse of Weber and his men sitting on one of the walls waiting on their turn to use the space. Moving on, he walked past the map room. Inside, the mortar platoon and gunship pilots pre-plotted targets and rehearsed their radio calls. Everything is coming along nicely, which means something will go powerfully wrong during the mission.

  Finally he came to the “barracks” area. Formerly a large conference room where sponsors rubbed shoulders, the Panzerter teams walked around pieces of paper that marked real buildings in the town.

  “Remember,” Mo said as he entered. “Buildings can stop shells, but if you need to get somewhere, don’t be afraid to walk through a few.”

  Smith looked uncomfortable. “Uh Sergeant, are we sure we’re ok with destroying someone’s home?”

  With a smile, Reiter entered the room. “If it’s someone’s life over the building, choose life,” he said. “Minimizing the damage to homes is nice, but most of the population is in Grunbeck or further West.” He paused, glancing at their “buildings” all over the floor. “Just don’t destroy the foundry, we need that once we toss the Unis back across the border.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Wesser said. “Since you’re here, would you like to show the teams where you will be?” Reiter paced around their “map” until he stopped of the autobahn behind a hotel.

  “I’ll be about here,” he said. “That way I can support anyone who needs it quick, but I’m also guarding the approach to our Medevac point.” He spun to his right and pointed at Magyar. “PFC Magyar, where is our casualties collection point and what is our Medevac plan?”

  The excitable young woman stumbled over her words for a moment. “Well it’s, uh…” She looked at Reiter and the surrounding space. “It’s where the dropships are, right?”

  Reiter nodded. “Correct, Smith, what’s the nearest friendly unit to your position?”

  “That depends on where I stand and where the drop troopers are, sir,” he replied. “If they occupy a building near me, it’s their first squad. If they’re away from me, the scouts are about 800 meters to my ten.”

  “Good, it’s important for all of you to be aware of friendly forces,” Reiter said. “We’re going to be working with a lot of forces we normally don’t, so it’s important to be aware of them and what they are doing.” He looked around the room. “Who hear is confident calling in Mortars?” When no-one raised their hands, he sighed.

  “Alright, that’s an issue,” Reiter said. “Fortunately, Brunnen is pretty cool, when you guys are done here, I want you to go practice calling for fire with the mortars and the gunships, that’s a skill all of you should know but especially team leaders and team sergeants.”

  As Reiter spoke First Sergeant walked in. Having caught the last bit of Reiter’s speed, he added his own two cents. “To piggy back off what the commander said. If you tape an index card to your monitors or firewall, you can load it with the lines you need for fires and the lines for a Medevac.”

  As the panzerter teams returned to their rehearsals, Reiter and Klammer stood back to observe. Kozma, Wesser, Mo, and Steele would occasionally interject with some kind of disaster or unforeseen action to gauge their team’s reaction. A team getting wiped out by artillery, enemy contact from a weird direction. Between the four of them, the pilots talked out every foreseeable monkey wrench that could be thrown at them.

  Which means there’s something else out there we won’t see coming. He shook his head. Where does this dread keep coming from? Leaving the pilots to their work, Reiter headed back to the officer’s quarters. Alone in his room, he paced about, mulling over his previous plans.

  I’m not a world beating tactician or strategist, I’m clever occasionally, but I know that’s not enough to keep everyone alive. He sank onto his bed and lowered his head into his hands. Lord, if you’re hearing this, we’re going into battle soon.

  Snow whipped past his face, though not as often as Kennedy had recently seen. He stood in the open cockpit of his Jupiter, watching as his battalion mobilized to attack. Except his order to move didn’t come down. Scowling at his watch, he keyed up his helmet radio.

  “Something’s wrong, we’re past the point where Meyer should have given us the order to advance,” he said.

  “Is there a chance you misremembered the time, comrade? Or maybe she did?” Halphen offered. Kennedy looked down at the mobile command post that the smaller man occupied.

  “No, if Meyer updated her timetable, she would have said something,” Kennedy replied. “And I’ll grow fangs and howl at the moons before Meyer misremembers anything.” He looked off over the hills. Was it just him? Or were some of the gray clouds…off?

  Spears jumped on the net. “My command matrix isn’t updating outside of our battalion. When I ask for information from division HQ, I get an error message.”

  With a frown, Kennedy ducked inside his own machine and ran the same request. Sure enough, he got an error message: no data available. “I’m going to try raising someone on division net,” he said. As soon as he switched back, he heard the other battalion commanders trying to raise contact with somebody.

  Someone needs to take charge of this mess. “This is Reaper 6, who’s closest to Landfall?” He asked.

  “I’ve got a patrol nearby,” The Motor Commander replied. “I can send them to go check it out.”

  Why didn’t you think of that before? “Roger Snowback, keep us updated,” he said. “Until we establish contact, we’ll delay twenty-four hours, Reaper out.” Switching back to his own network, he updated his leaders. “Until we get some answers, we stay put, but I’m beginning to suspect something bad has happened at HQ.”

  Knight’s Jupiter pondered over the ground trembling with every step he took. Popping his hatch, the giant stepped out of his equally massive machine. “Think they got hit?”

  “If the Tharcians launched an attack through Landfall and we don’t know about it, the whole division is fucked,” Kennedy said. “That being said, if we rush down there and it’s something as stupid as their comms acting up at a bad time, we’ll be way out of position to attack and will probably lose the bridges.”

  “So it’s a lose-lose situation then, huh?” Knight replied. Below them, soldiers mounted on trucks began breaking out rations. Kennedy stepped back into his
cockpit and grabbed a beverage pouch out of the warmer.

  “I was saving this for when we got to the intersection,” he said. “But I guess I’ll have time to make another one.” He sipped the hot beverage and shook his head. “I think this is my last good one though, the other two I have are ok.”

  “What kind are your other two?” Knight asked. “I have an Acadian Cream one, but that’s too sweet for me.”

  Kennedy looked back up. “Yeah, I’ll trade, that’s what I’m drinking now.” He ducked back inside, grabbed a hazelnut pouch and tossed it to Knight. In return, the other man tossed his Acadian Cream. “I don’t know what’s taking the Motor battalion, they said they had a patrol nearby.”

  “Think it’s partisan related?” Knight asked. “What if they tried to spring that Pete character free?” Kennedy shook his head.

  “I doubt it,” he replied. “We killed a lot of them in that trap we set, and he seems to be their big leader, I doubt they’d be able to organize without him.” Snow whipped past him. “I don’t miss the wind on my face, but I’ll miss it when we start seeing Tharcian drones.”

  With a snort, Knight pulled his jacket tighter around him. “Are they really that big a deal? The Olympians really didn’t use a ton of drones.”

  “Absolutely,” Kennedy replied. “During the initial advance it seemed like Tharcian drones always showed up to bail them out of trouble, and unlike ours, the Tharcians have one multipurpose drone that can bomb you, but also dogfight.”

  “Didn’t you guys have drone support then as well?” Knight asked.

  Kennedy nodded. “Yeah, but there’s always seemed to be better integrated,” he said. “When the Tharcians bring their A game, they bring the entire house with them, if we prevail we need to be the same way.” He looked east, where they’d previously fought. “I’m sure you got a taste of it last time you fought them.” With a curt nod, Knight told Kennedy he’d tasted it alright.