by David Drake
My tracks accelerate me through the cloud of pulverized rock where the hillcrest used to be. The infinite repeaters in my turret hammer the anomaly with continuous fire. I am mixing ring penetrators and high explosive in a random pattern based on cosmic ray impacts.
I hope this will confuse the Enemy defenses. The only evident effect of my tactic is that, .03 seconds from the time the first HE round should have hit the anomaly, the Enemy begins to include high-explosive rounds in the bursts which flash harmlessly against my electromagnetic shielding.
I am clear of the rock dust. I align myself with the anomaly and fire my Hellbore from its centerline hull installation.
Even my mass is jolted by the Hellbore's recoil. A laser-compressed thermonuclear explosion at the breech end voids a slug of ions down the axis of the bore, the only path left open. The bolt can devour mountains or split rock on planets in distant orbits.
My Hellbore has no discernible effect on the anomaly; but .03 seconds after I fire, an ion bolt smashes into me.
I am alive. For nearly a second, I am sure of nothing else. Circuits, shut down to avoid burning out under overload, come back on line.
I have received serious injuries. My hull and running gear are essentially undamaged. Most of the anti-personnel charges along my skirts have gone off in a single white flash. This is of no importance, since it now appears vanishingly improbable that I will ever see Enemy personnel.
87% of my external communications equipment has been destroyed. Most of the antennas have vaporized, despite the shutters of flint-steel which were to protect them. I reroute circuits and rotate back-up antennas from my hull core.
My infinite repeaters were cycling when the ion bolt struck. Ions ravening through the aperture in my electromagnetic shielding destroyed both infinite repeaters, bathed the hull and wiped it clean of most external fittings, and penetrated the turret itself through one of the weapons ports. All armament and sensory installations within my turret have been fused into a metal-ceramic magma.
The turret ring is not blocked, and the drive mechanism still works. I rotate the turret so that the back instead of the hopelessly compromised frontal armor faces the anomaly.
Data clicks into a gestalt which explains the capabilities which the Enemy has demonstrated.
I brake my starboard track while continuing to accelerate with the port drive motors. My hull slews. The change in direction throws a comber of earth and rock toward the outpost. Though my size and inertia are so great that I cannot completely dodge the Enemy's second ion bolt, the suspension of soil in air dissipates much of the charge in a fireball and thunderclap. My hull shakes, but the only additional damage I receive is to some of the recently replaced communications gear.
I am transmitting my conclusions to Command via all the channels available to me. I load a message torpedo intended for communication under the most adverse conditions. This is a suitable occasion for its use.
The Hellbore discharge has disrupted the guidance systems of the artillery rockets the Enemy launched at me seconds earlier. In the momentary silence following the bolt's near miss, I release my torpedo. It streaks away to warn Command. The Enemy ignore the torpedo in the chaos of their own tumbling shells.
The Enemy is not mirroring matter. Rather, the Enemy mirrors facets of temporal reality. Our forces have seen no evidence of Enemy stardrive because for the Enemy, a planet can fill a point in space where once existed or will one day exist. The Enemy need not transit the eternal present so long as there is a congruity between Now and When.
Personnel of the research facility I have been tasked to eliminate have developed the technique still further. They are creating a special space-time in which whatever can exist, does exist for them so long as there is an example of the occurrence in their reality matrix.
Their tool is the anomaly that appears from outside to be a non-reflecting void. It is a tunable discontinuity in the local space-time. The staff of the research facility use this window to capture templates, copies of which are in .03 seconds shuttled into present reality and redirected at their opponents.
The research facility can already mimic the firepower of an infantry company, a battery of rocket artillery, and—because of my actions—a Mark XXX Bolo. I have only one option.
There is no cover for an object my size between me and the research facility. Though my drive motors are spinning at full power, nothing material can outrun the bolt of a Hellbore. The third discharge catches me squarely.
The shockwave blasts a doughnut from the soil around me. My turret becomes a white-hot fireball. The electromagnetic generators in the turret were damaged by the initial bolt and could not provide more than 60% of their designed screening capacity against the second direct hit. My port skirts are blasted off; several track links bind momentarily. My drive motors have enough torque to break the welds, but again I slow and skid in a jolting S-turn.
My target is a research facility. It is possible that the Enemy will not be able to develop similar capabilities anywhere else before our forces have smashed them into defeat. That is beyond my control—and outside my mission. This is the target I have been tasked to eliminate.
I open the necessary circuits and bypass the interlocks. A disabled Bolo is too valuable to be abandoned, so there have to be ways.
I have no offensive armament. My Hellbore is operable, but the third ion bolt welded the gunport shutters closed. A salvo of armor-piercing shells hammers my hull, lifting me and slamming me back to the ground in a red-orange cataclysm. The multiple impacts strip my starboard track.
I think of Major Bowen, and of the Saxon bodyguards striding forward to die at Maldon:
Heart grow stronger, will firmer,
Mind more composed, as our strength lessens.
The citizens do not need to know what the cost is. They need only to know that the mission has been accomplished.
My sole regret, as I initiate the scuttling sequence that will send my fusion pile critical, is that I will not be present in .03 seconds. I would like to watch as the Enemy tries to vent an omnidirectional thermonuclear explosion into their research facility.
Best Of Luck
A Russian-designed .51 caliber machine gun fires bullets the size of a woman's thumb. When a man catches a pair of those in his chest and throat the way Captain Warden's radioman did, his luck has run out. A gout of blood sprayed back over Curtis, next man in the column. He glimpsed open air through the RTO's middle: the hole plowed through the flailing body would have held his fist.
But there was no time to worry about the dead, no time to do anything but dive out of the line of fire. Capt Warden's feral leap had carried him in the opposite direction, out of Curtis' sight into the gloom of the rubber. Muzzle flashes flickered over the silver tree-trunks as the bunkered machine guns tore up Dog Company.
Curtis' lucky piece bit him through the shirt fabric as he slammed into the smooth earth. The only cover in the ordered plantation came from the trees themselves, and their precise arrangement left three aisles open to any hiding place. The heavy guns ripped through the darkness in short bursts from several locations; there was no way to be safe, nor even to tell from where death would strike.
Curtis had jerked back the cocking piece of his M16, but he had no target. Blind firing would only call down the attentions of the Communist gunners. He felt as naked as the lead in a Juarez floor show, terribly aware of what the big bullets would do if they hit him. He had picked up the lucky Maria Theresa dollar in Taiwan, half as a joke, half in unstated remembrance of men who had been saved when a coin or a Bible turned an enemy slug. But no coin was going to deflect a .51 cal from the straight line it would blast through him.
Red-orange light bloomed a hundred yards to Curtis' left as a gun opened up, stuttering a sheaf of lead through the trees. Curtis marked the spot. Stomach tight with fear, he swung his clumsy rifle toward the target and squeezed off a burst.
The return fire was instantaneous and from a gun to th
e right, unnoticed until that moment. The tree Curtis crouched beside exploded into splinters across the base, stunning impacts that the soldier felt rather than heard. He dug his fingers into the dirt, trying to drag himself still lower and screaming mentally at the pressure of the coin which kept him that much closer to the crashing bullets. The rubber tree was sagging, its twelve-inch bole sawn through by the fire, but nothing mattered to Curtis except the raving death a bullet's width above his head.
The firing stopped. Curtis clenched his fists, raised his head a fraction from the ground. A single, spiteful round banged from the first bunker. The bullet ticked the rim of Curtis' helmet, missing his flesh but snapping his head back with the force of a thrown anvil. He was out cold when the tree toppled slowly across his boots.
* * *
There were whispers in the darkness, but all he could see were blue and amber streaks on the inside of his mind. He tried to move, then gasped in agony as the pinioning mass shifted against his twisted ankles.
There were whispers in the darkness, and Curtis could guess what they were. Dog Company had pulled back. Now the VC were slipping through the trees, stripping the dead of their weapons and cutting the throats of the wounded. Wherever Curtis' rifle had been flung, it was beyond reach of his desperate fingers.
Something slurped richly near Curtis on his right. He turned his face toward the sound, but its origin lurked in the palpable blackness. There was a slushy, ripping noise from the same direction, settling immediately into a rhythmic gulping. Curtis squinted uselessly. The moon was full, but the clouds were as solid as steel curtains.
Two Vietnamese were approaching from his left side. The scuff of their tire-soled sandals paused momentarily in a liquid trill of speech, then resumed. A flashlight played over the ground, its narrow beam passing just short of Curtis' left hand. The gulping noise stopped.
"Ong vo?" whispered one of the VC, and the light flashed again. There was a snarl and a scream and the instant red burst of an AK-47 blazing like a flare. The radioman's body had been torn open. Gobbets of lung and entrails, dropped by the feasting thing, were scattered about the corpse. But Curtis' real terror was at what the muzzle flash caught in mid-leap—teeth glinting white against bloody crimson, the mask of a yellow-eyed beast more savage than a nightmare and utterly undeterred by the bullets punching across it. And the torso beneath the face was dressed in American jungle fatigues.
* * *
"Glad to have you back, Curtis," Capt Warden said. "We're way understrength, and replacements haven't been coming in fast enough. Better get your gear together now, because at 1900 hours the company's heading out on a night patrol and I want every man along."
Curtis shifted uneasily, transfixed by the saffron sclera of the captain's eyes. The driver who had picked him up at the chopper pad had filled Curtis in on what had gone on during his eight weeks in the hospital. Seventeen men had died in the first ambush. The condition of the radioman's body was blamed on the VC, of course; but that itself had contributed to rotted morale, men screaming in their sleep or squirting nervous shots off into the shadows. A month later, Warden had led another sweep. The lithe, athletic captain should have been a popular officer for his obvious willingness to share the dangers of his command; but when his second major operation ended in another disaster of bunkers and spider holes, the only emotion Dog Company could find for him was hatred. Everybody knew this area of operations was thick with VC and that it was Dog Company's business to find them. But however successful the operations were from the division commander's standpoint—the followups had netted tons of equipment and abandoned munitions—Warden's men knew that they had taken it on the chin twice in a row.
It hadn't helped that the body of Lt Schaden, killed at the captain's side in the first exchange of fire, had been recovered the next day in eerily mutilated condition. It looked, the driver whispered, as though it had been gnawed on by something.
They moved out in the brief dusk, nervous squads shrunk to the size of fire teams under the poundings they had taken. The remainder of the battalion watched Dog's departure in murmuring cliques. Curtis knew they were making bets on how many of the patrol wouldn't walk back this time. Well, a lot of people in Dog itself were wondering the same.
The company squirmed away from the base, avoiding known trails. Capt Warden had a destination, though; Curtis, again marching just behind the command group, could see the captain using a penlight to check compass and map at each of their frequent halts. The light was scarcely necessary. The mid-afternoon downpour had washed clean the sky for the full moon to blaze in. It made for easier movement through the tangles of trees and vines, but it would light up the GIs like ducks in a shooting gallery if they blundered into another VC bunker complex.
The trade dollar in Curtis' pocket flopped painfully against him. The bruise it had given him during the ambush still throbbed. It was starting to hurt more than his ankles did, but nothing would have convinced him to leave it in his locker now. He'd gotten back the last time, hadn't he? Despite the murderous crossfire, the tree, and the . . . other. Curtis gripped his sweaty M16 tighter. Maybe it hadn't been Maria Theresa's chop-scarred face that got him through, but he wasn't missing any bets.
Because every step he took into the jungle deepened his gut-wrenching certainty that Dog Company was about to catch it again.
The captain grunted a brief order into the phone flexed to his RTO. The jungle whispered "halt" from each of the platoon leaders. Warden's face was in a patch of moonlight. His left hand cradled the compass, but he paid it no attention. Instead his lean, dominant nose lifted and visibly snuffled the still air. With a nod and a secret smile that Curtis shivered to see, the captain spoke again into the radio to move the company out.
Three minutes later, the first blast of shots raked through them.
The bullet hit the breech of Curtis' rifle instead of simply disemboweling him. The dented barrel cracked down across both of his thighs with sledge hammer force. His left thumb was dislocated, though his right hand, out of the path in which the .51 cal had snatched the rifle, only tingled. Curtis lay on his back amazed, listening to the thump-crack of gunfire and bullets passing overhead. He was not even screaming: the pain was yet to come.
An American machine gun ripped a long red streak to within six inches of Curtis' head, no less potentially deadly for not being aimed at him. The wounded soldier fumbled open his breast pocket and clutched at the lucky piece. It was the only action to which he could force his punished body. The moon glared grimly down.
Something moved near Curtis. Capt Warden, bare headed, was snaking across the jungle floor toward him. Warden grinned. His face slumped suddenly like lead in a mold, shaping itself into a ghastly new form that Curtis had seen once before. The Warden-thing's fangs shone as it poised, then leaped—straight into a stream of Communist fire.
A two-ounce bullet meat-axed through the thing's chest back to front, slapping it against a tree. Curtis giggled in relief before he realized that the creature was rising to its knees. Fluid shock had blasted a great crater in the flesh over its breastbone, and the lower half of its face was coated with blood gulped out of its own lungs. The eyes were bright yellow and horribly alive, and as Curtis stared in fascination, the gaping wound began to close. The thing took a step toward the helpless soldier, a triumphant grimace sweeping over its distorted features.
Without conscious direction, Curtis' thumb spun the silver dollar toward the advancing creature. The half-healed wound-lips in the thing's chest seemed to suck the coin in. The scream that followed was that of an animal spindled on white-hot wire, but it ended quickly in a gurgle as dissolution set in.
The stretcher team brought Curtis out in the morning. His right hand had been dipped into the pool of foulness soaking the ground near him, and the doctors could not unclench the fist from the Maria Theresa dollar it was frozen on until after the morphine had taken hold.
The Guardroom
"Three kings," said Singer, a
nd the alarm rang to scatter the guardroom's inevitable poker game.
All four guards came alert; but it was Cohen's turn to go out, and there was that awareness too in the glances of the others toward him.
"Never learn when to back off, will you, Cohen?" said Singer, whose body was as squat and powerful as a troll's. He gestured toward the cards which Cohen, the other long-time veteran, had thrown in without displaying. "It isn't a bluff every time."
Elfen, the youngest of them when he was recruited to the four-man guard force, chuckled and said. "He'll live longer, you mean?" He had folded his cards after the draw and now slid them into the pile.
Cohen, preparing to enter the transfer chamber, said, "Game stops when the alarm sounds," with an edge of irritation. The frown that wrinkled the veteran's high forehead was probably because he was about to go operational rather than because of the gibe about his cardplaying; but the poker game was a safe subject. "I could've been holding a full house, Singer."
Pauli, the fourth guard, snorted and reached for the cards Cohen had thrown in. Singer froze the pile with one hand and deliberately stirred his own cards and the rest of the deck together with the other. "Give 'em hell, buddy," he said to the man in the transfer chamber.
