by Michael Ryan
That was an educated guess at the time. I had no idea – it wasn’t in the intel – what type of directional and homing systems the incoming missiles were using.
All my external sound collection had been turned off before ejection from the ship, there being no reason to listen to the air whistling past as I descended, but I saw explosions around and below me like orange blossoms flaring in the sky.
Three at first, and then another two a moment later.
Then another dozen.
“Fucking rookies,” I thought to myself.
The company commander keyed the all-company comm and transmitted, “Turn off your camo-skins, you fucking idiots!”
A second command came moments later. “Release chutes. Prepare for HSLDCA.” Which stands for high-speed-low-deployment chute action.
The military loves acronyms.
We continued our descent without further loss of life as the remaining enemy missiles flew in spirals, searching for targets above us.
I launched another set of antimissile flares – my last dozen – and directed them to pinwheel upwards.
At least one missile took the bait, but we still weren’t out of danger.
All warfare is a constant Red Queen situation: problem-solution-problem-solution. The term comes from a story about a young woman on a psychedelic drug trip. Her antagonist, the Queen of Hearts, explains that in her kingdom, you must run just to remain in place. In warfare, you advance only to keep even with your enemy. It’s like a giant treadmill.
My last parachute deployed explosively. I could see my moon-cast shadow grow on the ground below me by adjusting the contrast on my display. I was seeking enemies or other threats, but didn’t detect any. Nobody likes to drop into an ambush, but there are other things to consider, like falling through the roof of a civilian’s home – there were still primitive groups on this planet, just like there are still tribes on Earth that shun things like electricity and starships.
Drop through the roof of a farmhouse and your platoon will mock you for weeks.
I’ve seen it happen.
I cut loose my chute to avoid getting tangled, briefly activated the jet-pack, and slowed my descent enough to avoid splattering against the ground like a slapped mosquito. The distinctive smack of small-caliber enemy bolts began pinging off my suit when I was surface-minus-ten-meters.
Our CO sent another message: Echo-Alpha-Tango-Charlie.
Enemy action, take countermeasures.
Sometimes I wonder if Command thinks all drop troops are idiots.
Then again, here I was, forty-seven light years from Earth, taking small-round fire in a strange jungle, fighting in a war I personally cared nothing about…
I manually adjusted my vision to range on the troops firing at us. Callie was three hundred meters away. I sent her a message to move to my location if possible.
We rarely gave each other direct orders. Partners were by rule and necessity the same rank, rising or falling together. I was her spotter and she was mine when acting as a sniper team – our primary specialty. For other tasks, we generally had an odd-even system in place: I took shitty jobs on odd days, and she did them on even days. We didn’t argue much, but when we did, her freckled face, warm toothy smile, and womanly charms usually convinced me to acquiesce.
She arrived less than a minute later.
“How many?” she asked.
“No more than thirty,” I answered.
A demand for a status report came across our platoon channel, a request from Second Lieutenant Maybeeta. The platoon louie was a pure-blood Guritain and a career officer. Our squad leader was Master Sergeant Veetea, an Earth-born Guritain – perhaps with a bit of human, but I wouldn’t say that to his face. Like the lieutenant, he was a career soldier. Like us, this was his first mission to Purvas.
The squad leaders reported to the platoon leader, usually by requesting status updates across their line of sergeants.
Eventually, Sergeant Veetea keyed me – I had my own quick code designator. “Status?”
“Avery here,” I coded back. “Team is present and green. Prepared to return fire.”
“Green light. SPO. Sectors one dash eighteen.”
The SPO order – small projectiles only – meant our leaders thought we could remain less detectable if we didn’t bring out anything that exploded. I asked Callie if we should set up the CFMG-88, a two-man centrifugal force machine gun that fired minidarts, or if we’d be better off sniping with our Gauss AG.
She launched a minidrone. “Hold one,” she requested.
I waited.
Callie paused before answering. “Lightly armored guard troops,” she said. “They don’t appear to be disciplined. Too tightly grouped. I vote machine gun.”
“I like the way you think,” I agreed as I typed commands using a holokeyboard projected in front of me on the dirt. My equipment pack auto-dropped a box of mini-slugs, a tripod, and a multibarreled shaft. Callie carried the larger piece, a round, matte black, centrifugal-force-producing chamber. We worked together silently, having done this drill hundreds of times in training.
The gun can spit out five thousand rounds in a hair over a second, making a human-activated trigger worthless. You’d use all your ammo before you could manually release the trigger, and you’d be likely to put most of the rounds into a single target.
We were both connected to the gun via a Silver Wire, but I relinquished command of the gun to her.
“Stable?” she asked.
“Green,” I answered. The CFMG-88 produces no kickback, recoil, or sound, but an unstable base will defeat any attempt at precision targeting. The secret to using the weapon is to have total stability, accurate environmental information, and a good programmer to plug everything into the computer’s solution program.
If the troops downrange had been equipped with any advanced armor, our weapon choice would have been different; but they were suited in light shielding, unprepared for what was about to come their way.
Callie sighted a ranging microlaser on the center of the nearest guard’s head, just below the double black circles formed by his night vision goggles. She programmed the firing solution to deliver the highest probability kill shots: five-round bursts in a star pattern around a single initial shot aimed at the center mass of the face. The weapon would immediately seek the next target, plus or minus five percent differential, and fire identically. It would repeat until a minute passed with no new targets presenting, and then pause for new instructions.
She programmed the firing module in seconds. I watched her actions in a small pop-up in my DS, not because she needed my input but rather because I usually learned something new watching her program on the fly.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Green,” I said.
The first enemy toppled over dead after slapping his face as if a fly had landed on his nose.
The next guard twisted slightly.
Human reaction time to a visual clue is about a quarter of a second. I’m not sure how close to that the Tedesconians are, but I suspect about the same. The physics on Purvas are similar to Earth, perhaps identical, but I’m not anywhere qualified to comment on quantum mechanics.
In a quarter of a second, a multibarreled centrifugal gun could send twelve hundred and fifty darts downrange. Before the first guard hit the ground, the rest were dead.
A command sounded from the platoon channel. “Cease fire.”
We were already repacking our hardware.
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Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapte
r Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Excerpt from The Tetra War
