by Weston Ochse
Olivares and I stared at each other.
“But they don’t have volcanoes in Los Angeles,” I finally said.
Grunts on the line, where the enemy wants them dead, still goof off—even knowing that by letting their guard down they might die.
David Hackworth
CHAPTER THIRTY
“YOU DON’T LIKE him, do you?” I said.
“He’s a little too full of himself.”
“He reminds me of Mr. Pink,” I said.
“He certainly has the manipulation down.” Olivares stood to go.
I couldn’t help but put my nose squarely into his business. “What is it in your records that you don’t want anyone to see?”
“None of your fucking business.”
I laughed, and his face shifted to anger.
“Glad to see you’re still the same old asshole,” I said.
“Glad to see you’re the same old nosy fucker.”
I sighed heavily.
“What?” he yelled. Clearly the issue about his records was a big deal.
“I knew the honeymoon wouldn’t last.”
He sneered. “It never does.”
I let him go first, then got up and followed. His team room was down the hall on the left; mine was down and on the right. I headed to my room, opened the door, and went inside.
Right away I saw Ohirra as she sat talking with three enlisted soldiers.
“Afternoon,” I said, taking a chair and sitting with them. “Ohirra, you on the team?”
“I’m to be your intelligence liaison.”
I watched her face for any sign of emotion. Technically she outranked me, if you considered time in grade. She could take the team if she wanted.
“I was just telling them about your time in Africa,” she added.
“Don’t believe that Hero of the Mound crap. It was pure propaganda.” To the new three, I said, “I’m Lieutenant Benjamin Carter Mason. You can call me LT, or you can call me Mason. Just never ever fucking ever call me the Hero of the Mound. Got it?”
I watched as the nervousness was replaced with wary humor. Ohirra had probably been talking me up; I wanted them to realize I was as human as the next jerk lieutenant, just maybe a little luckier.
“So introduce yourselves.”
The first guy reminded me of Thompson, so much so that he could have been his older, bigger brother. Blond hair and blue eyes, he was the farmer-linebacker version of our little drummer boy. His hair was cut in a flat top. He had the hard sculptured cheekbones.
“I’m Stranz,” he said. “Been looking forward to getting some work off the compound.”
Both Ohirra and I waited for more, but Stranz leaned back and thought he’d said enough.
“What’s your background?” I finally asked.
“75th Ranger Regiment. Then part of a QRF with SOCOM.” He grinned and nodded like he was fucking Billy Badass and we’d already realized it.
There was this thing every soldier, Marine, airman, or seaman did whenever they encountered each other for the first time. They racked and stacked themselves by duty assignments, operational deployments, and trips to various warzones. It wasn’t long before everyone knew who’d done what. But I was the lieutenant and I wasn’t playing that game.
“This isn’t an interrogation, Stranz,” I said, leaning forward, my voice filled with razor blades. “This is an interview. You’re not on my team until I say you’re on my team. So if you want to sit back and act like the king of assholes, feel free, but it will probably mean you’re never getting off compound.”
Now it was my turn to sit back and appraise him openly as he slack-jawed stared at me. “Do you want to begin again?” I asked.
I could see him almost get mad as he snapped his mouth shut, then caught himself. He nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m Corporal Rennie Stranz, sir. I was with 75th Rangers in Afghanistan and was assigned to a SOCOM QRF. My specialty is infantry and heavy weapons. I was assigned as OPFOR here at National Training Center when the world shit the bed.”
I nodded as he finished. “What were your QRF missions?”
“We didn’t have any, but I spent a lot of time preparing.”
“I spent a lot of time in the motor pool, corporal, but that doesn’t make me a mechanic.”
“Yes, sir,” he stuttered.
“If you’re going to brag about being part of a Quick Reaction Force, it better be fucking relevant. Got it?”
He nodded quickly.
“Why are you on my team?”
“I’m a certified EXO mechanic and have logged over a thousand hours in the remodel.”
Finally, a good reason. “You should have led with that.” I turned to the other two. “Next?”
A young black kid with chiseled features, curious gray eyes, and a head shaved bald sat forward in his seat. “Sir, I’m Private First Class Malcom Macabre,” he said with a West Indies lilt. “They call me Mal, sir. I was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division in Operation Enduring Freedom in 2012. I was in Maiwand manning heavy weapons.”
“Is that your only experience?”
He nodded.
“Then why am I being assigned you and not someone with more experience?”
Ohirra chimed in. “PFC Macabre was awarded two Soldier’s Medals for saving the lives of his fellow soldiers in non-combat situations at Fort Bragg.”
“Two?” I asked. In my entire career I’d only heard of one being given away. A Soldier’s Medal was the highest medal in the peacetime Army and awarded only to those who’d saved someone’s life.
Ohirra nodded. “Two. In a six-month period.”
One Soldier’s Medal would tell me he was conscientious of his fellow soldiers. I wasn’t sure what two meant. I reminded myself to ask Mal what he’d done.
“You weren’t assigned to Fort Irwin. How is it you came to be here?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. I was on leave in Colorado skiing with some of my mates when the alien invasion happened. Fort Carson was hive central, so we headed here.”
And finally, “What about you?” I asked the third soldier.
She looked a little stunned, but quickly recovered. She was clearly Middle Eastern. She had a scar across her nose like it had almost been cut off. She wore a flattop just like Stranz, only hers was jet black. Only concern I had was she was five feet tall if she was an inch.
“I’m Corporal Sula Ali, Sir. I spent three tours in Afghanistan assigned to Psychological Operations.”
I ignored the suppressed smiles from both Stranz and Macabre and asked, “What does PSYOP do in the field?” Because I didn’t actually know.
“Sir, we go into each village and embed ourselves so that the populace understands our message and is comfortable with our presence.”
I stared at the other two and said, “So you don’t work from an FOB?” The other two would have projected from a forward operating base, returning to it so they could sleep snugly behind high security fencing.
“No, sir. We lived with the indigs.”
“Did you feel the danger?”
“Every damned second.”
“Then why’d you do it?” I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it said aloud.
“It was important that they knew we were all in like they were all in. They were used to people rushing out from FOB and then back to FOB and leaving them alone. We stayed with them. We became part of the village.”
“You made them part of the team,” I said.
“And they made us part of their family,” she added.
I observed the soldiers. I had these three, Ohirra, and then Dewhurst, who was leading the overall mission. Six grunts on my team. Six grunts to take down one hive, while Olivares took down the other hive with six of his own.
Tonight we’re going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
WE STOOD INSIDE a hangar-sized building in an old OPFOR motor pool. Insignia and dates told the tale of who’d been the opposing forces from the 1970s on, including a special section for the Tarantulas, a small, special elite force designed to capture and kill the enemy’s senior leaders. The crest was of a black tarantula with knives at the end of every hand. The same crest was on the chests of the twelve EXOs that stood before us in two lines of six.
I remember back when the Faraday Suit was revealed. Its invention had been a logical response to the threat of the Cray. We’d all read Scalzi and Steakley and knew how they’d portrayed power armor and powered exoskeletons. Borrowed from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, which were in turn borrowed from E. E. Doc Smith’s Lensman novels; it wasn’t as if there was a copyright on the idea. When mere humans were forced to fight creatures so much larger than themselves, they needed mechanical assistance to survive, which was why the Electromagnetic Faraday Xeno-combat suit, or EXO, was invented by OMBRA technicians. To keep us alive, and to foil the Cray’s inherent EMP capability.
The problem was that EMP hardening caused immense problems with communications. Fortunately, OMBRA devised a method using Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF) with a ground dipole antenna established through the soles of the EXO’s feet. Since the majority of EMP energy is seen in the microwave frequencies, the system was capable of operating on a battlefield in which EMPs had been brought into play. Advanced digital modulation techniques allowed them to compress data on the signal, allowing real-time feeds between team members and back to base. A backup, transmit-only communications system resided in an armored blister atop the helmet. Called the Rotating Burst Transmission Module (RBTM), it was comprised of a one-inch rotating sphere inside of the blister with its own battery power. One side of the sphere was able to pick up a packet of data when rotated ‘inside’ the Faraday cage of the EXO; when rotated ‘outside’ this protection, it transmitted the packet as a burst.
The EXO itself was an armored and EMP-hardened powered exoskeleton suit that stood about nine feet tall and had about double the bulk of a strong human. The outer covering alternated layers of Kevlar and titanium, bonded together to protect both the wearer and the grounding web. Internally the suit had hardened electronics for video feeds, voice communication, targeting, night vision, sound amplification/dampening and vital sign monitoring, along with heating, cooling and an air rebreather system with CO2 scrubbers, all powered by extremely light, high-energy rechargeable batteries. All systems were controlled by eye movements, through an internal HUD system with Gaze technology, or remotely from base as a backup.
The techs had succeeded in improving the HUD system from the previous generation and had also been able to improve on the batteries. I could remember when an entire EXO had seized, leaving me locked inside and dying. That was a wonderful moment in my personal history.
Each Recon EXO had three primary weapon systems.
The integral rocket launcher (IRL) was mounted over the left shoulder on rails, so as to rotate it back out of the way or bring it forward to firing position when needed. The standard payload was thirty Hydra rockets with air-burst warheads set to detonate at a range determined before launch by the suit’s internal targeting system. Missiles were free-flight after launch, with a hardened internal timer for detonation. This system was designed to engage alien drones at maximum to medium targeting range.
Pulled out of mothballs at Aberdeen Proving Ground before the invasion, the XM214 was the EXO’s primary attack armament, a six-barreled rotating minigun fed from a backpack ammo supply through an ammo feed arm. OMBRA modified the original 1970s General Electric design, giving the system three backpack-mounted 500-round ammo boxes linked together, for a total of 1500 rounds. The original 1970s electronic controls, which could modify the rate of fire on the fly, were micronized, hardened against EMP, and incorporated into the ammo boxes. The servo that spun the barrels only engaged when the automatic harness system that pulled the weapon back out of the way was released.
When all else failed, a grunt needed a blade. A meter long and sixteen centimeters wide, TF OMBRA’s harmonic blade vibrated at ultrasonic frequencies, making it thousands of times more effective at slicing through armored opponents than a normal blade. The weapon was made from Stellite to help withstand the vibrational forces as well as any environmental extremes an OMBRA grunt might encounter, and the vibration was generated in the hilt by an electrically isolated system powered by a high energy battery.
We reviewed the improvements to the new model against the model I’d previously worn. Most of the advancements were in electronics, shielding, and battery power. OMBRA technicians had raided an abandoned Siemens plant outside of Munich and found the plans for the next generation batteries. Those plans had been incorporated into the new EXOs, extending the range from ninety minutes of activity to a startling twenty-four hours.
Wearing the EXOs sure beat returning to L.A. in an environmental suit. Not only would we be secure from spores, but we’d be able to rip through any fungees who’d go against us. Even as I thought this, it gave me pause. I remembered that while my body was controlled by the spore, I was a mute, helpless audience to what it was doing. Part of me wanted to explain this to my soldiers, but another part of me, that pragmatic part which needed them to survive, promised that telling them would do absolutely no good, and could get them killed. There was no way to get a cure to the infected prior to our mission. If they came at us, we’d have to take them down, pure and simple. I let the reality of that wash over me and knew it was a responsibility I was going to have to bear all by myself. Then with utter horror, I remembered the children who’d attacked Dupree, Sandi and me in the gravel pit. We’d taken them down like mindless zombies. It was only now that I realized that they were probably crying in their own minds, wondering what the world had done to them, screaming for us not to hurt them. I frowned. Not what the world had done to them, but what the Hypocrealiacs had done. I was suddenly grimly determined to take a version of hell to the aliens that they’d never imagined.
They finally released us to our own EXOs. Everyone had been rated to wear them. EXO practice had been a general part of their training. Sula’s had to be retrofitted for her small stature: a sort of booster seat was created for her legs and the internal arm actuators were extended for her hands. We climbed inside and began the process of getting to know our battlesuits. We were going to have a day to practice in the mock village of Ertebat Shar, then we’d go into L.A.. Our mission timeline was to hit our target in ninety-six hours. Not a large window.
We were designated Tarantula One, because Dewhurst was with us. He was in charge of the overall mission, which we’d still not been briefed on. He’d promised to let me and Olivares in on the secret this evening. All hush-hush; it wasn’t as if the enemy had anyone nearby to steal the plans. In the meantime, I was designated the battle captain for combat operations, making Dewhurst one of the members of Team One.
I called them to form behind me. When the great doors of the hangar opened, I began jogging and watched in my HUD as each of them fell in line behind me. We exited as a disorganized mob and stayed that way for a good while. I ordered us into single file and yelled at the team for not keeping distance between each other. They tried to get it by sight and couldn’t do it. After I told them to use their front and rear laser targeting nodes, they were able to calibrate their machines to stay within parameters. I was trying to teach them that it was less about what they could make the EXO do and more about what the EXO could do for them.
When they got to the point where they could keep an equal distance, I had them flow into a V formation. At first they were all over the place. Again I advised them how to use the EXOs, and they were soon programming the machines to do the work for them. After switching from a single file to a V and back several dozen times, we then worked on overwatch and bounding overwatch.
Twice Stranz complained about the drills, wanting instead to shoot something, and
twice Sula shut him down.
Dewhurst was silent throughout the exercise, as were Ohirra and Macabre. And for good reason. By the time we were done, we were huffing and puffing with exertion. The suits took on much of the effort for us, but we were still using our muscles and bones to actuate the movement. I drove them hard and wanted them to feel the effort. So as we stood in a circle and faced each other, gasping for breath, I checked everyone’s life signs. Dewhurst’s were the worst. His heart rate was at ninety percent of his max, while everyone else’s was at seventy percent.
“This was nothing, ladies and gents,” I said to one and all. “If you’re breathing hard, it’s because you’ve gotten soft.”
“We’re not soft. It’s just we’ve never been in combat with these before,” Macabre said.
“Felt more like band practice,” Stranz said, laughing. “I think we made some hearts, maybe stars.”
“Funny,” I said. “Going to be even funnier when you fail to move into the correct formation and you find yourself all alone as Craybait. We looked like shit out there, but at least we got better. You need to learn to trust your suits. Use them, don’t force them. Like any tool, they’re only as good as the operator. We’re going to practice again in four hours. Meanwhile, I want you to find a tech and get them to show you how to field strip the ammo accelerators. I want you to know the parts inside and out. If you need to, make that tech your best friend. Stranz, help them out.”
Sula and Mal groaned, but didn’t argue.
They needed to know how close to death they were. “I’m going to break it down for you, Barney-style. Back at Kilimanjaro, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We went out and fought and were picked apart. We were lucky to win. That’s right. You heard me. Lucky. Since then we’ve improved our TTPs. When we go into L.A., we’re not going to go in as a group of individuals. We’re going in as a team, with interlocking fields of fire. My goal, and yours as well, is to assure that we all survive whatever shenanigans Major Dewhurst has up his sleeve.”
