by Ian Douglas
“Nah,” he said, in response to her question. “I just don’t want to believe the fucking numbers I’m getting.”
“Well, you might as well relax. We have six more hours.”
“What I wanna know is how come we have to be out here at all. Rali units are automatic. All we need to do is lay a string of relays back to Zebra, and we could watch that damned screen in shirtsleeves in the comm center, with a cup of coffee on the desk and Johnny Hardwire or Pain playin’ on the speaker!”
“What do you think this is, Downer, the Air Force?”
“Aw, shee-it…”
The Marine Corps had technology enough to choke an elephant, but they still ended up doing things the old heave-ho grunt work way. It didn’t make a bit of sense. Rali units, dubbed “Sir Walters” by some unsung but historically literate member of the Corps, were meter-high tripod units that could be set up anywhere in a few seconds. Their mobile, flower-petal heads contained both radar and laser ranging units, and could be set to automatically scan all or part of the sky or surrounding terrain. Duane and Brenda had set this one up on a ridge top a kilometer away from their grounded lobber; there was no sense in having it close by when its emissions might attract unwanted attention from the enemy. At the same time, without signal ground relays or communications satellites, they couldn’t be far enough from the unit that its signal would be blocked by the horizon.
Which meant that pairs of Marines had to go out on OP duty to monitor the far-flung web of ralis in place. “We don’t have enough relays for enough Sir Walters to cover every possible approach,” BJ said. “So we do it this way.”
“Yeah. The stupid way. I think old Warhorse is full of shit.”
“The Major knows what he’s doing, Downer. Bravo Company would follow him to hell!”
“We’re in hell, BJ. A frozen hell. And I don’t remember being given a choice! I think most of the guys are just in love with Warhorse because his granddaddy was a commandant of the Corps!”
“You took your choice when you raised your hand for the oath, kid. And again when you signed up for MSEF duty. So you know who to blame, right?”
“Hey, thanks for the sympathy.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He chuckled, thinking about that night at the V-berg squad bay, when BJ had gotten her handle, and Sherm Nodell had gotten a mouthful of cement. He looked around at the frigid, makeshift OP and wished they were back in California, hitting the bars and the VR palaces and the good restaurants and the—
“Uh-oh,” BJ said.
“What?”
“Incoming.” She was tapping on the touchscreen of her rali monitor with a clumsy, gloved hand. “Damn working in this suit! Yeah…looks like a bogie coming over the horizon. Bearing…two-five-one. Altitude five kilometers.”
“Low.”
“And fast. And on a trajectory headed straight for Zebra.”
He rose to a crouch, turned, and molded the camocloth aside. At extreme low temperatures, the stuff became stiff and could be folded back like a sheet of clay.
“Where you goin’, Downer?”
“Outside. For a look with the old Mark I eyeballs.”
He stepped into harsh, cold light. The sun was emerging now from behind Jupiter, visible as a silver-white crescent sharp and brilliant against the eastern sky. He oriented himself quickly, turning to face the southwest. Compasses didn’t work on Europa, of course. Even if the icy moon had had a magnetic field of its own, it would have been overwhelmed by the far more powerful magnetic field of Jupiter close by. However, giant Jupiter was always in the same place in the sky, and his suit could work off of that. If that was east, then that was north and that was west and…
There it was: a silvery pinpoint of light climbing rapidly out of the southwest. In seconds, it had reached the high point in its trajectory just south of the zenith, and was descending again into the northeast. He lost it for a second against the glare of the Sun…then saw it again, falling toward the horizon.
Campanelli burst from behind the cloth, hugging the rali monitor and computer. “Let’s go, Downer! Get your ass in gear!”
He was already tugging down the cloth.
“Screw that,” Campanelli said, climbing the ladder up one of the lobber’s splayed landing legs. “No time!”
“Okay.” He scrambled up after her, swinging into the copilot’s position.
Six-ton VT-5 lobbers like this one had very few amenities, such as hulls. Essentially, it was two side-by-side seats and some simple controls perched on an open platform above a hydrogen-oxygen-burning rocket engine. It had been designed for light transport duty on the moon, where the airless environment did not require streamlining, but it had been used since on Mars as well. It was ideal as a surface excursion vehicle for the scientific team on Europa—and now for the Marines as well.
“Ready?” BJ demanded.
“Set,” he replied, strapping in.
“I’m taking her up at forty-five degrees. That gives us our best compromise of getting closer to the base and being able to beam a warning over the horizon to Zebra as quickly as possible. Then we’ll cut power and fall straight in. Checklist!”
“Right. Fuel pressure, H2.”
“One-eight. Go.”
“Fuel pressure, O2.”
“One-five. Go.”
“Computer.”
“Booted. Up and running.”
Swiftly, they ran through the abbreviated checklist, then BJ fired the engines without the dignity of a countdown. “Hang on to your stomach!” was her only warning as she mashed her thumb down on the engine ignite button. Duane felt the hard, sharp kick in the seat of his suit as the lobber arrowed straight up, climbing rapidly in Europa’s light gravity. White vapor and glistening crystals swirled out from the lift-off site, along with the torn-away sheets of camo material, rippling slowly in the ghostly, silent jetblast.
They would have to climb to nearly one hundred kilometers to clear the radio horizon with Ice Station Zebra. They left the rali unit in place on its ridge top OP; there was no time to recover it.
Corporal Duane Niemeyer clung to the edges of his acceleration seat, unable to watch the dizzying panorama as Europa’s billiard-ball-smooth surface dropped away beneath him, and unable to close his eyes for fear he would miss something. When he looked up, the baleful eye of Jupiter, now a scimitar-curved slit silver beneath a shrunken sun, glared back. Below, the horizon canted alarmingly as BJ put the ungainly little craft into an unpleasantly tilted attitude, the engine still silently rumbling beneath him. He’d always hated amusement park rides as a kid, and this was as wild as any theme park.
He concentrated hard on not being sick inside his helmet.
Squad Bay
E-DARES Facility, Cadmus Linea
Europa
1538 hours Zulu
“No, no!” Corporal Lucky Leckie said, laughing as the others groaned or shook their heads. “It’s the way to model all of the different U.S. armed forces! It’s called the snake model. You ever hear about it?”
“Leckie,” Gunnery Sergeant Pope said, shaking his head. “If this is another one of your scams, s’welp me—”
“No! Honest to God, Gunny! It’s like this, see? You’ve got a snake in your AO, right?”
“What kind of snake, Lucky?” Sergeant Dave Coughlin asked.
“Hell, how should I know, Sarge? It’s just a snake, ’kay?”
“Is it poisonous?” Corporal Lissa Cartwright wanted to know.
“I don’t know! Okay, it’s poisonous! And it’s in the Area of Operations. So who ya gonna send?”
“The Marines!” several of the men sitting in the squad bay growled in chorus. First Section, Second Platoon had gathered there in the large storage compartment volunteered by the civilians at the base to serve as the Marine squad bay and muster area, to pull routine suit and weapons checks. As they worked, Lucky regaled them with his story.
“No,” Lucky replied. “First you send in your Airborne
. Now Airborne comes down in the AO, lands smack on top of the snake and kills it. Then they find out that this is the wrong AO and they just killed the wrong snake.
“Then you got your armor. They come in, run over the snake, and kill it. Then they go out looking for more snakes, and run out of gas.
“Army Aviation comes in, using a GPS grid to plot the snake’s position down to one half of one centimeter. They can’t find the snake, and fly back to base for a cool drink and a manicure.”
That brought some booming laughs. The Marines had a poor opinion of the air-ground coordination employed by the other services.
“Okay,” Lucky went on. “Then you have your Army Ranger. He plays with the snake…then eats it!
“Field artillery masses ten thousand mobile artillery units, launches an all-out TOT barrage with rockets and HE with three FA brigades in support and kills the snake…and several hundred civilians, with massive collateral damage. The mission is declared a success, and all participants, including mechanics, clerks, and cooks, are awarded the Silver Star.”
That brought more hoots and guffaws. Artillery support, long considered an absolute necessity for any battlefield evolution, was fast becoming a dinosaur. You had to mass far too many units to be truly mobile and effective—and counterbattery fire would savage any concentration of guns that stayed put for more than one shot’s worth. “Smart” FA, employing laser-guided munitions, allowed pinpoint accuracy if you had a spotter team near the target or in orbit, but if you didn’t, the barrage was likely to be about as surgically precise as a small nuke.
“Combat engineers! They come in and study the damned snake! They prepare an in-depth, five-series field manual on employing countermobility assets to kill the snake that’s about as obtuse as a doctrinal thesis. Then they complain that the maneuver forces don’t understand how to properly conduct countersnake operations by the book!”
“Combat controllers!” someone in the room shouted, getting into the spirit of things. “They come in and guide the snake elsewhere!”
“Yeah,” Lissa added, laughing. “And Pararescue. They wound the snake on the first pass, then paraglide in and do their damnedest to save its miserable life!”
“Navy SEALs!” Lucky shouted. “They swim in at night, march fifty kilometers inland, take an uncomfortable position which they hold for twenty-four hours just to keep themselves from falling asleep, ambush the snake, expend all of their ammunition, including three cases of grenades, and call in naval gunfire support…miss the snake, whereupon the snake bites the SEAL and dies of lead poisoning!”
“Yeah!” Pope added, “Or else the snake gets away, and the SEALs blame the mission failure on poor intel!”
“Hey!” QM1 Mike Hastings growled from a far corner of the compartment. He was one of the SEALs who’d made it down to Europa’s surface, and he didn’t sound pleased at having his team included in Leckie’s rundown. “I’ll stuff that damned snake up your ass, Jarhead!”
“Easy, Squid! Easy!” Pope said. “Nothing personal!”
“Air Force!” Lucky called. “We all hate the Air Force, right? The Air Force pilot comes in, misidentifies the snake as a late-model Chinese KQ-190 advanced high-altitude interceptor, and engages with smart missiles. He can’t tell whether he killed the snake or not, but he goes back to base for a cold one, while the crew chief paints a cool-looking snake silhouette on his airplane.”
“How about Marine Recon?” Hastings said, still glowering. He was wearing an olive-green T-shirt that looked like it had been painted across impossibly massive muscles. “They go out and follow the damned snake…and get lost!”
“Okay,” Lucky agreed. “I’ve known some Marine Recon guys. I’ll buy that! But then ya got your Army Special Forces. This guy goes in alone and makes contact with the snake. He talks to it in snake language. Builds a goddamn rapport with it, wins its heart and mind…and then teaches it to go out and kill other snakes!”
“Military Intelligence!” Pope called out. “They locate the snake using a spy satellite. They study the snake scale by scale and watch its movements. They draw up an extensive report on snakes, snake scales, snake lice, snake shit, and snake movements, and send it up the line to the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the National Security Advisor. Meanwhile, the snake disappears, and no one can find it again!”
“I got a better one,” Staff Sergeant Rubio said. He’d been designated the company supply officer, a position he regarded with about as much enthusiasm as a snake in the barracks. “Army Quartermaster Corps! This guy captures the snake, paints it with an NSN, and implements an FOI, after which he has the base commander sign for one snake, green, with scales, poisonous, on a nonexpendable hand receipt. Later, after claiming he doesn’t have any snakes, he ships it out to a company deployed in the field. Unfortunately, what they asked for was one rake, with handle, for area, policing of.”
Everyone in the barracks was howling with laughter over that one, when the deck hatch opened and Major Warhurst clambered up the ladder.
“Attention on deck!”
“Carry on!” he snapped before the Marines could come to their feet. “What the hell’s the commotion?” He didn’t sound angry. Merely…interested.
“Sir, we’re talking serious tactical snake-killing doctrine here!” Lissa said, laughing.
“Yeah!” Pope added. “Lucky’s got the whole damned Armed Forces figured out, Major.”
“Really? Well, maybe you’ll explain it to me sometime!”
“Hey, Lucky!” Sergeant Bannacek called. “What about the Marines? What do they do with the snake?”
“Just like always,” Lucky replied, “they improvise, they adapt, they overcome! They hunt the snake down in its own backyard and kill it from air, land, sea, and space!”
“Yeah,” Lissa put in, “and then the President declares the deployment a police action, with the Marines, as the Navy’s policemen, no less, responsible for enforcing the laws about snakes!”
A harsh braying alarm echoed through the compartment. “Major Warhurst! This is Walthers, in C-3! Where are you, sir?”
Warhurst walked to a bulkhead intercom and pressed the talk switch. “I’m here, Lieutenant. Squad bay. What’s up?”
“We got hostiles incoming, sir. OP-Igloo just called in the report. One Fat Boy, coming in at five kilometers, ETA two minutes!”
Warhurst spun from the intercom. “All right, Marines!” he bellowed in a DI’s stentorian bark. “Saddle up! We got snakes to kill!”
“You heard the Major!” Pope added. “Suit up! Suit up! Move it! Move it! Move-move-move-move-move!”
Lucky was already dragging his Mark II armor from its squad bay ready-rack and stepping into the bulky legs. All around him, the other Marines swiftly made the long-practiced moves to don their suits, grab their weapons, and move toward the ladder leading up to the airlock and the outside.
This is it, he thought, wildly if unoriginally. The moment…
He had never been so terrified in his life.
TWELVE
17 OCTOBER 2067
Chinese People’s Mobile
Strike Force
Near Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1541 hours Zulu
Descending Thunder No. 4 bucked and kicked as the pilot cut in the four main engines, killing the spherical craft’s velocity and gentling it to an unsteady hover above the icy plain. Clouds of vapor boiled away beneath those invisible blasts of white-hot plasma as landing legs extended, reaching for the vehicle’s slow-crawling shadow.
Colonel Yang Zhenyang was strapped into the command seat, a complex-looking barber’s chair tucked into an alcove on the flight deck just off the cramped bridge. With leads jacked into his skull and wrists, he could follow the situation directly as it unfolded.
For millennia, the so-called fog of war had dominated every battlefield, and “no plan survives contact with the enemy” was war’s prime postulate. That was changing now, though, with the advent of AIs and virtual linkage. The i
mages flickering in his head now were crude—grainy and shot through with static—but they could give him simultaneous views from a dozen cameras carried by troops or vehicles. At the moment, only one camera was active, showing the panorama to the east as the lander settled slowly to the steaming, fuming ice. The crater holding the CWS base was visible only as a slight rise against the endless blue-white flat of the Europan landscape. There was no sign of any immediate military response. It was certain that the enemy knew they were here, however. The Descending Thunder No. 3 had been fingered by radar and painted by laser ranging beams from the moment they’d swept in over the horizon.
As the lander settled on yielding hydraulics, the cargo bay ramp came down and a sextet of low, flat-topped, tracked vehicles rolled out, their treads spinning glittering bits of ice into the sunlight as they bit the frozen surface. Cameras mounted forward between the tracks relayed separate views to the lander’s AI, which processed them and fed them through to Yang’s virtuality suite.
Each vehicle was two and a half meters long, a meter wide, and just over fifty centimeters high. Each possessed a ball turret set into the forward glacis, mounting a seventy-five megawatt pulse laser. The machines were called zidong tanke, or “automatic tanks.” In fact, they were robot tanks that could either run on a simple hunt-kill program or be teleoperated from a distance. They’d been painted white so that they would blend in with their surroundings, though after a few moments, enough white powder covered their upper decks to camouflage them completely.
The robot tanks spread out in a rough line abreast, grinding silently toward the crater two kilometers away. Behind them, Chinese troops in heavy, white-camo suits with SC-weave radiation shielding, bounced down the lander’s ramp and began dispersing across the plain. The ground here was uneven, but not broken, and gave no cover. The squad leaders had been directed to get their men to the shelter of the crater’s outer rim as quickly as possible. They could begin taking fire at any moment.
