The Gates of Hell

by Chris Kennedy

  The first delivery of 20 machines was almost ready when Colonel Cartwright visited again. This time he was accompanied by a young man in a brand-new uniform, who looked remarkably out of place in it.

  “Doctor Mauser, I’d like to introduce you to Sergeant Branson. I recruited him to head up training on these new machines. I thought I’d bring him over to work with you guys on developing the program.”

  The young man nervously started to salute, when Cartwright said to him, “You don’t have to salute, Doc here is a civilian.” He caught himself and extended his hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Mauser, eyeing the young man. “Would that be Kenneth Branson?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “I thought so. Congratulations on your victory down in Dallas. There was a big article about it on the company website. You made us look really good.”

  “That’s why I had to hire him. He’s a natural,” said Cartwright. “He’s the same fellow I got the idea from in the first place.”

  Paul smiled at Ken. “Made you an offer you couldn’t refuse, eh? He’s good at that.” Ken blushed. Looking across the shop, Paul shouted out, “Hey, Mark! You done loading the new code on prototype four? Give this guy the nickel tour and let him have a go at it.” He turned back to Ken. “See that guy in the yellow hard-hat with ‘Tonka’ written on it? Go see him; he’ll get you set up. Just don’t shoot anything.” Ken looked concerned, but he reassured him, “We don’t actually have any ammo here in the factory.”

  The two men watched the young sergeant cross the shop floor. Paul turned to the colonel and gestured toward his office. “Got time for a Coke?”

  “Always.”

  * * *

  Training began immediately after the first batch of CASPers were delivered. A dozen of the machines squatted on the Cavaliers’ training ground beneath a hastily-erected scaffolding, heavy steel cables hung from an I-beam that ran above them to the hoisting rings set in the shoulders of the mechs, and the first dozen mercs scheduled for training milled around, looking them over. They all turned as a deuce-and-a-half pulled up with another mech crouched in the bed.

  The mech stood up and jumped off the truck, landing with a thump that shook the ground. It then walked up to the men and stopped. The entire front of the torso swung up, revealing Sgt. Branson. While not nearly as muscular and otherwise hardened as the mercs before him, the two-ton death machine he was riding made quite an impression.

  “Gentlemen,” he said without a hint of sarcasm, “I’m Sergeant Branson, and I’m here to teach you how to operate the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries CASPer Mk 1. By the time we’re done, you’ll be running, jumping, and shooting like it was second nature. But today, you’re going to have to learn to walk all over again.” He looked over the men and was surprised that almost all of them appeared to be taking him seriously. He’d been warned “there’d be one in every class,” but it looked like there were two. “Pick a machine and mount up, and I’ll make sure you’re all set up correctly.”

  After making sure the men had adjusted their stirrups tightly and set their seat heights, he returned to the front. “Pull down your yokes and lock them in position.” Like the seat restraint in a roller coaster, the padded bars flipped down over their shoulders and attached with a buckle to a strap at the front of the saddle. With the padded bolsters at the sides of the seat, they ensured the pilot would be properly positioned within the machine at all times. The control panel was mounted to the front of the yoke.

  “We’ll leave the canopies open for now. Right now I’d like to draw your attention to two controls on the panel in front of you. First is the master power switch. That’s the big red Emergency Stop button. Before you touch…” One machine began beeping as it ran its self-checks. In two bounds, Branson was right up against the offending machine. He reached around his yoke and slapped the button back off. Without a word, he went back to his position. “As I was saying before Mister Jenkins here interrupted, before you touch the master power switch, look at the mode switch and make sure it’s in the park position. That’s the squatting pose you all started in, but it’s easy enough to get knocked out of position, and if you try to stand before the gyros are up to speed, the results could be embarrassing for you, and fatal for whoever you fall over on. Now then, make sure the mode switch is in park, then pull the power on.”

  All twelve machines beeped their way through their self-checks, then the hydraulic pumps kicked in, pressurizing the system and loading the accumulators. Green LEDs lit on the control boards, indicating the mechs were good to go.

  “The next mode is Idle. This will stand you up. The inertial guidance will be in full authority. This is very useful, believe it or not. If you’re riding in a vehicle, or just standing guard, you’d exhaust yourself and your batteries trying to keep steady. After that is Walk, which has somewhat less guidance authority, then Run, which is optimized for fast moving, and finally Manual, which has no inertial guidance at all. We’ll go through all these modes in turn, but first, engage Idle and stand up.”

  Eleven CASPers slowly and evenly stood up. The last, however, violently kicked, shoving upward much more strongly with one leg than the other. It tipped and sagged from the cables as the legs spasmed, digging deep furrows in the dirt and kicking rocks in every direction.

  “Hit the stop! Now!”

  The pilot mashed the red button, and the mech stopped thrashing. Branson walked up, livid. “Let me guess. ‘I don’t need no computer telling me how to walk, I can handle this myself.’ Right?! You went right for the fucking manual mode, didn’t you?! Well let me give you your last CASPer lesson. Put that machine in park, turn it on, and once it settles, turn it off again and get out. You’re done here, Mister…” he read the nametape on the man’s uniform, “… le Roi.”

  The lesson continued without further mishap, and soon the men were comfortable marching in place, turning back and forth, and so on. Ken figured they were acclimated enough to the lag between lifting on the stirrup and the legs coming up, and the way the machine compensated for the shift in balance from two feet to one like the original loader, only much faster. He decided to cut them loose.

  “When I disconnect your support cables, I want you to walk forward, around that truck, and back to your starting position. Only the last ten feet, I want you to walk backwards. Try not to knock over the scaffolding.”

  It was painful to watch, as the first machine staggered in the general direction of the truck. Ken jogged over to him, taking position in front of the man and walking backwards so he could see what he was doing.

  Groaning, the man—Corporal Callen according to his uniform—muttered, “It’s like having fifty pound blocks strapped to your feet.”

  “You’re fighting it too much. Lift your feet evenly, and it should keep up with you.”

  There was some improvement, but the machine still lurched from side to side.

  “Keep your toes pointed in the direction you want to go. You’re kicking way out to the sides. That’s better. Keep it up, you’re halfway there.” He jogged back to the rest of the class. “If any of the rest of you walk duck-footed, you’re going to have a difficult time. The hips twist outward to match the angle of your feet, and that affects the way your knee bends. Aside from poor balance, that requires a lot more adjustment to keep you on an even keel, and that’ll eat your battery.”

  “Can’t we just adjust the stirrups to compensate, Sergeant?”

  “If you were to do that, aside from reducing your range of motion, it means your flesh and blood knee would be bending on a different axis from the knee of your leg shell. And that, as they say, would be bad. You’re just going to have to work on your posture.”

  Eventually, all eleven CASPers had made the walk. “I’m very proud of you all. None of you managed to fall over, although that is pretty difficult in walk mode. There’s one last thing I want to show you before we hike these machines back to the shed for recharging. Jenkins, you like to rush into things
. Give that knob a twist to Run and take a lap around the truck. You might want to put down your canopy, too.”

  Jenkins began to move forward slowly, and a little more unsteadily.

  “Yeah, just because the knob says run doesn’t mean you have to run. But because I say run, you do. Pick up the pace.”

  Jenkins lumbered toward the truck, picking up speed until he was positively jogging, and when he got to the truck, he started turning.

  Only the CASPer didn’t turn, it tumbled spectacularly. Momentum carried it in the direction it had been running.

  “Come on,” Ken said to the rest of the class, “this is what I want to show you.”

  When they arrived at Jenkins’ prostrate CASPer, he shouted, “How you doing in there?”

  “You set me up!”

  “You did better than I thought. That was probably about a five mile an hour crash. That harness should keep you safe up to around forty. Which is overkill, because the best you can make in one of these suits is about ten. But here’s the thing I want to show you. Set it to park.” The mech’s legs retracted to a squatting position. “Now grab both joysticks and pull them straight back the same amount.”

  The CASPer’s arms began a slow rotation, up over the head and straight back, and in a motion not possible for Human beings, continued past the “head” until they were pushing against the ground, then eventually they stood the machine up on its feet.

  “Excellent!” Ken shouted. “Just like in Judo, it’s important to know how to fall and how to get back up. Especially when we start training with running and jumping. Everyone should expect to get a lot of practice doing this. Okay, let’s head back to the shed.”

  * * *

  Ken was exhausted. Pretending to be tough like some kind of drill sergeant wasn’t easy for him. Although when he thought about it, that’s exactly who he was now.

  “So only one washout,” said a voice behind him.

  Ken jumped to his feet and saluted the colonel.

  “Relax, son. I brought you onboard for training, not soldiering. I just wanted to see how it went.”

  “Actually, pretty well. I’ve trained a lot of people on the loaders, but that’s usually one-on-one, and frankly, there’s usually a lot less ego involved.”

  “That’s why I made you a sergeant, so you outrank them. But in training, the only real ranks are Instructor and Student. Even when it’s my turn, I expect you to tell me what to do and how to do it.”

  “Yes, sir. But do you really want to do it? Those CASPers aren’t exactly safe. They’re missing a lot of the interlocks the loaders have.”

  “They’re weapons; they’re not supposed to be safe. Your job is to train the drivers to handle the dangers. Either way, I think my chances are better inside one of those suits than outside.”

  * * *

  Corporal Chuck “King Charlie” le Roi was enjoying the easiest march on his objective ever. While the 0.85 G of Leatrun 4 would have made any march easier, he found a much better way that involved no marching at all. The objective was a factory on the outskirts of town. Zuul mercenaries had seized it, and the rightful owners had called upon the Cavaliers to seize it right back. It was a perfect first outing for the new CASPers. The hired dropships had set them down at the starport on the north side of the city. Most of the CASPers had been loaded into trucks. But several had been detailed to escort the caravan, including his buddy Corporal Peter Jenkins. Chuck was assigned to CASPer support.

  With their short battery life and limited onboard ammo, each mech needed at least one support troop to aid in resupply and rearmament. So the CASPers on patrol each towed a small trailer with a generator from a pintle hitch on the rear of the mech. The generator supplied additional power through a quick-release power cable connected to the battery housing in the back of the machine. The trailer was also stacked with ammo cans for the .50 caliber main guns, and the 7.62 mm chainguns. Jenkins’ trailer was also stacked with “King Charlie.” The trailers could be easily dropped by pulling a release inside the cockpit, and Jenkins was about two more “Mush!” jokes away from giving it a test.

  “All I’m saying is you could be walking a lot more smoothly if you tried. This jerk-jerk stuff is really annoying.”

  “Maybe if you ask real nice, they’ll let you ride on a truck. Or you can walk.”

  “Nah, I gotta stick with you, buddy. But look at Sergeant Buckley over there, he’s got it down pat. Nice and smooth.”

  “Maybe you can go ride with him, then.”

  Their banter stopped when the caravan was called to a halt at the target industrial park. The buildings were arranged in a sort of offset grid, more reminiscent of a brick wall. Toward the front, they tended to be office buildings, mostly glass and the local version of concrete. Toward the back of the lot, the buildings tended to be simple sheet steel warehouses and machine shops. The building they were after was in the back.

  The Zuul mercenaries were obviously aware of their presence. The starport could easily be seen from here, so they must have seen the dropships. They would be ready.

  As the CASPers deployed off the trucks, Chuck kept a wary eye for scouts or worse. And it didn’t take long before he saw a head peeping over the top of one of the offices.

  “Sniper! Rooftop, three o’clock!” His warning was punctuated by three bursts from his rifle, which was rewarded by the Zuul sniper falling from the building like a scene from a classic western—if the cowboys had been anthropomorphized German Shepherds and worn modern combat armor. The shrubbery around the building was also peppered by infantry fire, just for good measure. If there were any more scouts, they’d fallen back in the face of overwhelming numbers.

  Their battle plan had been worked out well in advance. As soon as the CASPers were ready, they would split into two groups and push up either side of the central row of buildings, forcing the defenders to keep their forces distributed as they were flanked. Whichever side broke through first would sweep across the defending lines, making an opening for the rest of the Cavaliers to join the party. They’d also mapped out where the ammo caches would be dropped, and paired CASPers would relieve each other as they stepped back to reload. Infantry would handle resupply and guard the flanks.

  Like all good plans, it didn’t survive first contact with the enemy. As Jenkins and the rest of Buckley’s squad rounded the corner of the loading dock, they discovered the Zuul had used the two weeks it had taken to send for and ship out the Cavaliers to severely reinforce their positions. The perimeter of the factory had been completely surrounded by a barricade, complete with concrete pillboxes at the corners. A fusillade of light lasers was focused on Buckley, and the pillbox opened up, too. The heavy bolt from the pillbox struck Buckley’s left machine gun, blowing it up as the ammo in the feeder instantly cooked off. He scrambled back just in time to avoid another bolt. His armor was covered with squiggly gouges halfway through the plate, “worm tracks” in the vernacular, caused by the movement of the lasers as they hit. They may have been well-entrenched, but clearly the unfamiliar machines had the Zuul rattled. If they’d been more disciplined, some of those shots might have penetrated.

  “That pillbox has gotta go!” shouted Buckley. “He’s at the end of the line, so pie the corner, two by two.”

  Jenkins took his place, standing back from the edge of the building, with the corner just obscuring the pillbox’s line of sight. He and Callen both took a step or two to the left and painted the pillbox with their .50 cals until they ran dry, then ducked back behind the building. Before the crew in the pillbox could stick their heads back up, the next two CASPers opened up, and so on. Le Roi and the other infantrymen were kept busy reloading the burning-hot machine guns.

  Running back from the ammo dump with two more boxes of .50 cal sucked, even in the lower gravity. Running back with the last two boxes sucked even more. The concrete of the pillbox had been jackhammered by the heavy fire, but it still hadn’t failed, and the gunners, having been emboldened by the feeling
of invulnerability it gave them, stayed at their gun and were making hits on the CASPers.

  “Sarge, this is the last of it.”

  “Crap, what else have we got?”

  “We have a ton of ammo for the miniguns.”

  “If the .50 won’t go through it, that won’t do it, either. What I wouldn’t give for an RPG right now. Anything else?”

  “Uh, a couple of claymores.”

  “Crap. Guess I gotta take the fight to them. Get me some green tape.”

  Buckley taped the claymore to the ruined end of his left arm and fed the wire to the clacker through the edge of his canopy. “On three, everyone with anything left, step out and give me covering fire. Keep their heads down until I can deliver this.”

  Thirty CASPers fanned out from the loading dock, miniguns sweeping up and down the barricade. The cacophony was deafening even through the armor. Buckley sprinted toward the pillbox, tracking the slit with both gun cameras. He plowed into the pillbox at full tilt and jammed down the detonator. A pound and a half of C-4 sent 700 tiny steel balls ricocheting around the interior of the pillbox, pureeing everything inside. Buckley’s CASPer fell away from the box, landing on its back.

  Inside, Buckley shook himself. “Sonofabitch, I figured I was gonna die.” With nothing left of its arms, he had no way of righting the mech. He just caught a glimpse of Zuul troopers peeking over the barricades, seeing if there was a way to get at him. “Maybe I still will,” he muttered as he fished around at his side for his .45.

  Back at the loading dock, the men were furiously reloading the miniguns. “Sarge is still alive, we gotta get him out of there,” several troopers said.

  Chuck was feeding more ammo into Jenkins’ minigun when Jenkins said, “Don’t bother, it’s down. I don’t have any control of it.”

  “Lemme take a look.” He climbed on the back of Jenkins’ CASPer and examined the gun. “Looks like you took a hit through the control cables, but the gun still has power. Hang on, I have a really stupid idea.”