As I was putting on my war gear I heard the call over comms, “Sergeant Slaughter, this is HQ Three Alpha, Over.”
Captain Blythe. I didn’t have an official call sign. I used the bumper number. “This is ORF One, over.”
“Yeah, about that. We’ll talk later. Line up out front of the logpac. You’re on point. Hill two.”
“Roger.” I climbed into my cupola, switched to internal comms. “Caldwell, you ready to roll?”
“Yes Sergeant.”
I glanced down at Parks. He gave a thumbs-up. “Move out, lead vehicle of the logpac.”
The tank moved. We had no sooner stopped when the other vehicles started moving. The sun set and darkness came. I kept the pace at twenty kilometers an hour. Four cargo trucks and four flak guns followed, flanked by three IFVs on each side. Night vision optics weren’t great on Tumbler, but they were effective out to five hundred meters. I used thermals and watched ahead and scanned right and left. About eight klicks out from hill two I noticed movement and eight objects at a range of three hundred and sixty meters. I put my cupola gun sights on them and sent the image to the TOC.
I heard Major D’s voice. “Kill ‘em.”
I sprayed the area. The movement stopped, the objects were flat on the ground, less warm than before. I fired again and a target caught fire. Parks swung his turret left and engaged targets with the coax. I kept my field of fire to the right.
The infantry had dug in at the base of hills one and two, set a skirmish line between them, and three tanks were behind each hill ready to prevent a move around the flanks. I waited at the bottom with two cargo trucks and two flak guns while the other two cargo trucks and flak guns went up the hill. Four empty cargo trucks came down and took their place in the convoy. We moved to hill one and delivered the last two trucks and flak guns and took on five more cargo trucks. Then we moved back to the TOC area. I was released from duty and given ‘cool’ status and parked my tank facing out and then stretched out on the flat area behind the turret and once again thought I’d get some sleep.
Emily showed up. “Hi.”
I stood. She climbed up on my tank and sat with her back leaned against the turret. I sat next to her and said, “How you been?”
“I’m okay. I thought we’d be back on the transport by now.”
“Me too. That stasis pod is calling my name.” I heard the forward flack guns firing in the distance, looked that way. Tank main guns fired laser bolts, their impacts making the sky blink and glow along the horizon. The flak guns on my old lookout point fired as well. I stood. “We need to get down from here. This turret could swing at any time.”
I helped her stand and we climbed down and got twenty meters away from the vehicle and sat in the grass cross-legged facing each other. Rounds whooshed from the mortars. Emily leaned forward and knocked me onto my back and lay on top of me. I gazed into her eyes. The rumble of the explosive impacts of the mortar rounds came more than a minute later. Several rounds at first, then fewer, then just occasional shots. Point targets, no doubt.
She said, “I wish this fight were over.”
“It will be. But not any time soon.”
“I heard. We’ll kill them all. We’re now officially Task Force Exterminator.”
I smiled. “Is that what they came up with?”
“Major D came up with that. He has no imagination.”
I gently rolled her off me and sat up. “It’s supposed to be Task Force Delagiacoma. That’s doctrine, to name the task force after its commander.”
Emily held my left hand. “He doesn’t want his name on this.”
She stood and tugged at my hand and I stood. I gave her a hug. She turned away and walked back to the TOC dome. I went back to my tank and sat in the cupola and disabled the alertness monitor and went to sleep in the seat.
***
Parks punched my left thigh. “We’re moving out.”
I reactivated the alertness monitor, connected my helmet, popped my hatch and raised my seat. The sun was up, about an hour into the sky. I looked around. Everything was march-ordered and lined up. My tank was at the rear of the convoy, its turret facing backward. We moved toward hill two, north of it and then turned right so that our vehicles were aligned along the Eastern edge of what had been the Indig village. I looked. Scorched earth, a scattering of blasted vehicles of various types and sizes. The Indigs couldn’t stand the mortar and flak gun fire, couldn’t do anything to stop it, and decided to make a hasty exit to the South under cover of darkness. A grass fire burned in the distance, its column of thick gray smoke blown Northwest by a gentle breeze. The Indigs who were able, had left. The call came over the command net, “Exterminators: mission, police call.”
I dismounted with Caldwell and left Parks at the weapons station. Soon a line of troops formed at double-arm interval. TOC/ALOC etcetera was the right half, troops from the line companies the left half. Captain Blythe walked by giving instructions, repeating the same thing over and over as he came within earshot down the line. “…of them. If you object to doing this, take one step to the rear now. Lock and load your Eliminator with buckshot. We will pick through the wreckage for survivors and will kill them. All of them. If you object…”
I looked to the direction he had come from. Looked like about a dozen troopers had stepped back. Other commanders briefed their sections of the line. Maybe two dozen troops weren’t coming. The Charlie commander took charge of them, armed them with picks and shovels, and marched them off to hill three to bury the dead troops where they fell.
Captain Blythe received a call on his headset and waved us forward, let us get past him and then followed along behind the line. I came across an elderly man tending six wounded Indigs. A warrior, two women, three kids. The youngest was about four. I’d analyzed the video I’d managed to take from the tank recovered from hill three, the recording made during the final Indig charge and then the aftermath on hill three. Part of my job, preparing a report for the TOC. I saw things. The kid in front of me was about the same age as the kid I saw using a club to smash in the head of a wounded trooper, the woman in front of me now not too different from the woman I saw telling her child the best way to do it. The blows, it took the kid a full six blows to kill the wounded trooper.
I raised my weapon. The elderly Indig raised his hands above his head.
Caldwell said, “He’s offering to surrender.”
I said, “So what?”
I shot the youngest kid first, then the other two, then the woman. While I reloaded, the trooper to my left shot the wounded Indig warrior and the second woman. Caldwell blew the elderly man’s head off. We picked through the mess. Occasional shots rang out to the left and right but I didn’t encounter any more Indigs. By the time I got back to my tank, the recovery vehicles had finished digging a large pit bermed on three sides. They then spread out on the West end of the abandoned village and began pushing the ash and trash into the pit. Took a while. There was an abandoned fuel tank trailer full of Indig diesel still intact. I got the job of towing it into the trash pit. Unhooked it there, backed off two hundred meters and perforated it with my cupola rail gun. Then Parks fired the main gun at charge one and set it ablaze.
Task Force Exterminator formed up with a wedge of tanks in the front, three columns of IFVs and support vehicles behind them, and headed South in search of more Indigs. The trash pit burned behind us, high yellow flames and thick black smoke.
Chapter Ten
Captain Blythe commanded the tank on point, my old ORF-2 tank. The tank recovered from hill three, bumper number A-13, was to the right of Blythe, and I was in ORF-1 to the right of it. Tank HQ-3 with Major Deskavich in the hatch was to the left of ORF-2, and tank HQ-1 was to the left of him with Captain Shuttler in the hatch. Charlie was the left wing of the wedge and Bravo was the right wing. Major D rode in a command post carrier to my left rear, beside another command post carrier to its left. Major D didn’t stand up behind the gun of his track; he left that job to some
one who had considerably more skill with the weapon. Major D stayed down inside and monitored comms and observed status screens.
In the distance, about ten klicks ahead, I saw what I thought at first was forest. But then I detected movement, and besides, the cluster was mostly brown and black. And even this near the equator, the ground got covered by at least ten meters of snow and ice every year here on Tumbler. At a range of four klicks I was able to positively identify the beefalo, a heard that stretched to the horizon. Major D ordered a change in the axis of advance, sixteen hundred mils to the right, and an increase in speed. We paralleled the heard for nearly two hours and finally went past it by three klicks, then turned left and drove another five klicks and finally turned left again and advanced within fifty meters of the herd and stopped.
Major D called up. “With lasers only, we don’t want to waste ammo on this, with lasers only, engage your targets. The beefalos.”
Other tanks fired before mine, their laser bolts shooting through the bodies of herd animals, passing through to hit more of them. Some fell, some looked annoyed and stared back at us. Parks had his gun at charge twelve. His shot created a two hundred meter long cone of dropped animals spread out from his muzzle, the flesh hissing and popping from the burn of the laser. The other tanks slowed their rate of fire and used charge twelve as well. The grass caught fire. The herd began moving away from us and then sped up to become a stampede. The wind was coming from my left rear and the fire was carried away from us by that wind.
D ordered us forward up to the edge of the fire and the chuck wagons pulled up next to dropped beefalos and the cooks dismounted and started sawing off choice cuts of meat. Soon they had enough and got back in their vehicles, got back in formation. D ordered a U-turn and we drove fifteen klicks away and parked in a circle facing out, an IFV between each tank and the support vehicles set up in the center. I put Parks on watch and told Caldwell to get some sleep and then I dismounted the tank and went to the TOC for a planning meeting. I was early. Major D sat on the lowered assault ramp of his command track and waved me over and patted the spot on his left. I sat down next to him.
He said, “What was the nature of your relationship with Stallion Six?”
I thought for a moment. “I’m the schools, movement, training and tasking NCO for the battalion.”
“You were his watchdog, his hatchet man. Right?”
I smiled. “Right.”
“Well I already have one of those. One is more than enough. Your girlfriend, Sergeant Dickinson.”
“Yessir.”
He leaned back, elbows on the ramp, hands on his belly. “What I need right now is a tank commander. That, and some heroes to raise morale around here.”
I scratched my head.
He sat up. “What’s your opinion of Captain Blythe?”
“He’s good, real good.”
“Can he fight a tank?”
“Shot a thousand, every six months, predictable as the sunrise and just as reliable.”
“Good.” D stood. “I’m putting ORF-1, ORF-2 and A-13 as an independent platoon and you’ll ride behind the unit as the rear guard. And you’ll flank any ambush attacks. Sound good?”
I stood. “Yessir. With any luck at all you’ll be able to hang medals all over Captain Blythe.”
D shook my hand. “Thank you for your honesty. Time for a meeting.”
The distinct smell of steaks on a grill filled my nose.
I moved to the back of the group of leaders who gathered in a semi-circle facing D. He stood on the ramp of his track and said, “Thank you all for coming. I’m sure more than a few of you are confused about today’s action. Well let me clear that up. Winter’s coming and we’re heading South to stay ahead of it. In a week or two we’ll be on the equator and we’ll operate along it for a while, patrolling for Indigs. But for now we’ll harass the beefalo herd. That herd is their chow. Right now I’m sure the various groups of Indigs are getting reorganized and preparing to start their beefalo hunt. The more we mess with that herd, the harder their hunt will be.”
He removed his helmet and rubbed the top of his head. “I talked to one of the Frogs up in the sky, and I also spoke with Coyote, he’s up there now. There are no beefalo in the area sectored off for the Indigs by the French. The French are providing chow, and also trying to entice the Indigs to take up permanent residence in their orbital habitat. It doesn’t take a freaking genius to figure out the Frogs will withhold chow to make the Indigs more cooperative. So my plan has a little payback against the Frogs for screwing us over. We’ll push a large number of these beefalos right into the designated area so those Indigs can get to them. Questions?”
Captain Shuttler raised his hand. “Sir, what if some of the Indigs we’re hunting down follow the herd into the safe zone and then blend in with the Indigs there?”
Major D smiled. “‘Safe Zone.’ I like that. The Frogs call it a ‘Reservation’ and that’s a French word and I’m not trying to speak French any more than I have to. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what to call it. Thank you, Captain Shuttler. Now to answer your question. I’ll just say don’t be surprised if you find yourself with your back to the edge of the Safe Zone cutting down a large group of Indigs trying to get into it. But if they get in, we leave them alone. We’re following our contract to the letter. We will do nothing to jeopardize our dispute of it.”
Captain Shuttler nodded, looked down and folded his arms across his chest.
Major D said, “If there’s nothing else, go see the cooks. Tonight we eat steak!”
I went back to my tank and sent my crew to eat. I dug through data and found the most recent overhead view of the area of operations, sent down from the ship about three hours before. The indigs were not easy to spot. Some streaks of discoloration in the grassy plains may have been left by them, spread out to the south and southwest of the abandoned village. The smoke and fire of that place was clear on the image, the gray smoke of the grass fire spreading out in a reverse wedge that slowly dissipated to a slight haze farther away from its source. But one thing definitely stood out. The herd of beefalos. They were, collectively, a terrain feature all their own, and mobile. I zoomed out to where I could still distinguish them, looked around. Didn’t see any other herd. This was it.
I then read reports complied by the Frogs over the past three years, translated into Standard recently. It was hard to make sense of all of it, much of the meaning lost in translation. I had to read between the lines to figure out the most important information. There was no real proof, but I got the distinct impression that the Frogs had infested several herds with disease or killed them with poison, or both. Sure, there had to be several smaller groups out there, too small to make it practical to find with image scans from space. So this was it, the last of Tumbler’s large, free-range beefalo herds.
Caldwell returned. “Sergeant Slaughter, you really need to get some of that steak.”
I stood, climbed down. “That good?” I’d had steak before.
She opened the auxiliary gunner’s hatch. “The best. You’ll see.”
“All right.” I shrugged. She dropped down inside the turret. I heard the little buzz of electronics being put trough built-in tests. I walked over to the chuck wagons and saw a line. Parks waved me over.
“We’re all lined up for seconds. You can cut to the front.”
“Thanks.” I went to the head of the line and the Trooper there stepped aside to let me pass.
The cook smiled and laid a two kilogram steak on a tray and handed it to me. He said, “You won’t be disappointed.”
I grabbed a knife and fork and a one liter mug of ale and looked for a spot to sit. These cooks knew their business, that’s for sure. I sat in a patch of undisturbed high grass, removed my helmet and ate alone. The steak was excellent. I set the tray and empty mug aside, lay on my back and took a nap.
Chapter Eleven
Next morning we moved. I was in the back with my new independe
nt tank platoon. Well, it was clearly Captain Blythe’s platoon but the tanks were mine. I’d been taking care of the ORFs for a long time. Even A-13, me and my crew spent more than a few hours assisting the mechanics, getting it back into full fighting form. Then we trained the crew. The tank commander was Corporal Williams, a stodgy woman who had been a tank driver on the Grinder contract and then switched to being an infantry fire team leader. The driver came from an IFV that had been destroyed. But the gunner, she was a cook. I felt that putting a cook in a tank was stupid; a waste of a perfectly good cook. The sort of people who volunteer for military service, those people can be trained and can achieve high levels of expertise in many of the arts of lethal combat, but cooks…to be a good cook takes something special, some sort of natural talent that can’t be taught. And it’s even more rare for someone interested in a military career to have those talents.
At the front of the columns on point were tanks HQ-1, HQ-3 and HQ-4. They formed the center of the wedge, with Charlie on the left and Bravo on the right. Those two companies had been reorganized into ten tanks each, a single tank for the Company Commander and three platoons of three tanks each. Two of the Bravo tanks still had Charlie bumper numbers, shifted over to Bravo to balance the units.
The task force neared its objective of a flat, open area and the center column stopped and then coiled in to a tight circle. My platoon stopped with it and took positions just outside the circle facing out. The two tank companies merged with the IFVs and made a skirmish line on each side facing out and the HQ tanks sealed off the far end. An area five hundred meters wide and two kilometers long was sealed off. The ten recovery vehicles used their front spades to scrape away at the surface, leveled it off and then ran over it to pack it down. Major D rode on a skimmer to inspect their work and then returned to his command post carrier.
The War for Profit Series Omnibus Page 65
