Insanity's Children

by Rolf Nelson

  After a few minutes of listening he was still puzzled as to what the emergency was. “So, to summarize, someone’s conscripts landed in the wrong place, walked across enemy territory, marched in a parade, then hit the beach on our side for a party, and left town quietly… that’s pretty much it? You called me away from fifty pound salmon for… conscripts screwing up and deciding to Hell with it?”

  “I guess you could say that, but it fouled up a lot of plans, and we don’t know who they are.”

  Fischer sighed heavily. To some people, everything was an emergency. “OK, OK. Overtime’s on your head.”

  “You’re on salary, Sir.”

  “Don’t remind me.” He tapped an icon for visuals. “Give me a map of their route.” After it appeared on his screen, he studied it for a minute. “Good route.”

  “Really? Why, Sir?”

  “The pub on 5th street. Wonderful mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches-”

  “I’ve been told to impress upon you that this is very serious, Sir.”

  “Serious. Got it…. Crash there, march south, turn at the road, through town, to the beach… You sure about these time markers?”

  “Best data we have, Sir. Crash time definite plus or minus a few minutes, as is sentry passing time. Parade march times 100% sure. Current location arrival time there ninety percent.”

  “That’s a serious pace…. got any visuals from the formation in the parade?” A series of aerial images popped up showing straight files and even ranks. The video revealed a textbook left-flank turn, and the counter-column was passable if a little uneven in the middle. Definitely not the standard shambling cluster of conscript mass movement. The compound movement, requiring a string of orders and a single execution command, was rarely done with anyone other than a garrison ceremony detail. Unusual, but the last time he felt threatened by a drill team maneuver it was in college when a pair of hundred-kilo majorettes with the hots for him backed him into a corner. “Any close-ups of personnel?”

  A string of thumbnail images arrive on the screen in fits and starts, depending on ionospheric whims. Tapping on the first one he sees a classic pose, one for the ages: a strapping young man in uniform sweeping a curvaceous young lady off her feet at the front of the parade, while all around the rest of the formation was in various stages of doing the same. He smiled. “Not like any parade I ever marched in. I like this guy’s style…. Looks like she does, too.” Tapping the next one, it’s a more typical-looking conscript, much softer-faced and slightly paunchy, but clearly smiling and cheerful, not the normal wide-eyed and wild-looking ‘script buzzed on the contract juice. The next few were the same.

  Huh.

  The puzzle did not fit together at all.

  He tapped the next image. Dark skin on a muscular body, with a swollen and lopsided face that had clearly been damaged recently topping it. He looked familiar from someplace… He’d seen that man before he was sure. The soldier was clearly off to the side of the formation, calling cadence or commands. “Others of this guy, different angles, higher resolution, anything?” A few more thumbnails appear. Tapping on them one at a time, a cold knot of ice started to form in his stomach as that memory in the back of his mind coalesced around the battered countenance he saw on his screen. Suddenly, a memory sprang into sharp focus wearing a different uniform, and the pieces fit, forming a partial picture, the vivid centerpiece of a mosaic in sharp focus amid a sea of blurred but ugly possibilities. His voice returned to its pre-retirement professionalism as he sat up in his chair and started briskly pounding away at the keyboard.

  “Shit just got Reel…. Lieutenant Seven, please wake up everyone in the command shrubbery that has anything at all to do with Gamma continent activity, and… belay that. Everyone on Gamma and everyone brigade and higher everywhere as well. I don’t know why he’s here, or who is with him, but I know that Plataean. The only thing his being here can mean is that someone is about to have his oatmeal pissed in, and Reel is standing much too close to our cereal bowl for comfort.”

  Somehow, Colonel Fisher guessed, a short battalion of Plataean regulars had been hired, and moved under the guise of a crash and mass confusion, right into the middle of a friendly AO. There was just no way to spin it: someone screwed up or got played, and a lot of men were going to die who were not, just a few minutes earlier, expected to.

  Eventually the moon started to rise above the horizon and illuminated the conscripts’ defensive perimeter, lighting up the positions, so it was agreed they should knock off until morning. They kept a one-in-four watch, with one of the veterans doing rounds to make sure everyone stayed frosty while the rest got some shut-eye in their newly created homes.

  Data was always a flood across LtC Marks’ desk, but actionable information was hard to find, especially since the recent massive hacking. Nothing was as easy as it should be. But the pieces were coming together now that they had a possible ID on one “Unknown” man, and the picture wasn’t pretty. It was looking like OPFOR had decided to go balls-out and hire a full company of Plataean contractors and smuggle them under the guise of standard conscripts. That would shift the balance of power in the area tectonically. He had to move fast, now, and decisively. It was colossal luck they had been hit mid-air and not able to make it to whatever rendezvous they had planned, but the sketchy intel he had said they would likely be there soon.

  Damn. Just when things had been looking up, this.

  Battle

  Artillery shells whistling overhead have a distinctive and chilling sound. The visceral thudding of underwater explosions and geysers of water they sent up in the pale gray dawn light when the shells went long and landed in the sea had a similar unique sound seconds later. After a thousand years of cannon-fire in war, fear of such things was nearly genetic in its instant embrace of man, veteran and novice alike. Everyone on the perimeter not already in his hole descended into his protective pit faster than gravity would seem to allow, and many of them saw the wisdom of increased depth right now. They didn’t need to be ordered, they just moved, instantly wide awake.

  The first barrage was scattered between fifty and four hundred meters off the coast, followed four seconds later in nearly the same location. After ten seconds with no more impacts, Harbin stuck his head up and bellowed out from his position “Stay down! They’ll adjust and fire again! Stay down until you hear rifle fire at close range! Then come up fast and aim carefully!” Then he hunkered down in his own hole, dug to a depth borne of experience, squatting away from the sides so he didn’t get slammed by the coming highly localized earthquakes.

  Thirty seconds later, another barrage came down, coming in from the north and bracketing them well by falling just a little short, this time with the explosions of impact reaching their ears before the whistling of their supersonic passage. The earth-shaking rumble somehow did not seem quite as scary when sending dark earth flying skyward to rain down on some of the perimeter foxholes as the ghostly white vertical spray of the first rounds hitting the water, which had an eerie, unearthly booming. The second and third rounds of the barrage landed together, four seconds apart again, in the same slightly short area. Harbin hoped that the opposing riflemen had snuck close during the night; if so, this barrage might do half his work for him. He knew that somewhere out there a spotter was adjusting fire, and the next set would be bad. But the rounds coming in were not heavy arty, 105 or smaller, so unless they spent a long time firing most of the men would live through it physically… though psychologically it might be another matter.

  The second adjustment was painfully well done, with a mix of airburst and ground impact detonation, creating craters and filling the air with whizzing shrapnel. While it seemed to go on forever, it was only a dozen round per gun before it slowed noticeably to a round every ten seconds, then slacked off completely after five more rounds.

  Harbin cautiously stuck his head up and looked north. No movement but wisps of smoke in the dim morning light. “STAY DOWN!” he yelled three times as loud
as he could before ducking his own head down again. A long minute passed, then another, when another series of three volleys came down on them, four seconds apart. When no fourth volley arrived, the First Sergeant smiled to himself. “By the book.” That was good. He hadn’t written the book, but he had taught from it and was on a first name basis with some of the technical advisers.

  He raised his head to scan the area, now pitted with craters and shreds of scattered brush, carefully laying out the forestock of his rifle in the sandy berm heaped up on the north side of his hole, noting the crater ten meters away as he scanned the near distance past the perimeter line. Sure enough, a long and ragged line of men carrying nothing but rifles and chest rigs of ammo were running towards them across a slightly uneven and cratered earth. Only two had whip antennas rising from small backpacks. Aiming carefully at one of them, he waited as they neared the line of foxholes, which blended in well with the newly planted crop of craters now occupying their defensive area. When they were at about fifty meters from the line, he fired a burst into the first radioman. Shifting aim, he took out the second radioman. Friendly faces and rifles started popping up all along the line, like soldiers from sown dragon teeth out of the earth. The men charging were running upright and charging straight in, close, and in the open. Some of them shot wildly on the run, spraying unaimed bullets everywhere. The conscripts of Mike and November Company fired from good defensive positions with minimal exposure and narrow interlocking fields of fire. The incoming companies, already damaged by the short volley after a long night’s march and the effects of the extended conscription drug conditioning program went down rapidly. Few lived long enough to even change their first magazine.

  When the third volley of artillery ended, Kaminski uncurled from his crouch to scan the heavens. Lots of smoke and dust, but he looked for the glint of something higher up catching the first rays of sunshine. Sure enough, a drone was watching the action from a distance, high enough to be out of the way of arty but inbound for a close-up battle damage assessment. He kept his head low and his ears open for gunfire, his rifle pointed north in case someone came upon him before the drone closed the distance. The bang of rifle fire that reaching his ears sounded pathetically weak after the arty HE rounds, but it was clear enough. He rose from his crouch. The nearest man he saw was carrying a radio, but was going down in a spray of blood already. The next closest was less than thirty meters away. Kaminski fired quickly, moving from one target in his sector to the next, casting his eyes up between each one to track the drone’s progress. The drone flew parallel to the skirmish line only a hundred meters up. Stupid drone pilot, or really shitty optics on board it, he thought to himself. Kaminski raised his rifle as it approached, taking one, two, five, ten shots at it before putting an effective one through its wing, tearing it off and sending the unit crashing to the ground like a wounded raven.

  In Helton’s foxhole, he knew the sound of Harbin and Kaminski’s rifles firing was his signal, and the sign to everyone else that it was time to do what riflemen do. He’d trained for it very long ago, and though he’d never had to fire in anger he had once again become familiar with the age-old weapon of war under expert Plataean tutelage more recently. But his ears were still ringing loudly from the nearby crater-making exercise he was part of. Even with the expected time dilation it seemed far too long to him and he didn’t hear any shots, or anything else beyond tintinnabulation. Rising in place, he saw an enemy soldier not five meters away, spraying wildly into the perimeter on full auto. He stopped firing, and stopped running to fumble a new magazine into the barely familiar weapon. The man’s skin and uniform were filthy, his eyes wild and movements jerky. Raising his rifle, Helton saw the man’s nametag in his optic and pulled the trigger. Liggett K 12/18 V fell slowly forward, attempts to reload his weapon ended forever. He fell from Helton’s line of sight and landed on the ground silently to Helton’s ear. Liggett’s silhouette was replaced a moment later in Helton’s sight by another man. Somewhat numb at the sudden action, Helton aimed and fired again, managing to miss at ten meters, firing again to more effect a fraction of a second later, but not before Tuckman K 12/18 V pulled the trigger and sent a bullet grazing Helton’s shoulder. A burning line of pain lanced through the top edge of Helton’s left trapezius, while the rest of Tuckman’s magazine emptied into the air as he stumbled backward with a clenched trigger finger as more red splotches appearing on his chest.

  The sound of gunfire rattled intensely for the next few minutes in the ears of those that could hear. But then, as it petered out and stopped, everyone paused to look around more generally because there were no obvious targets in designated fields of fire. No one stirred in his foxhole beyond crouching a little less low or standing silently to survey the battle-field.

  The veterans alternately scanned the skies and the killing field for movement. The newest inductees into war’s hellish reality experienced a wide range of reactions, from laughing off an adrenaline high as it became clear the threat was gone for now, to digging deeper in silence, to puking violently. A few were busy with bandaging wounds on their foxhole partners. Dozens of men injured in firefight screamed out, crying in pain or desperation for help.

  Helton saw the downed drone nearby, tail up in a crater, its camera mount turning, still trying to capture the scene. Looking across the carnage, he unsteadily climbed from his partially collapsed pit and wobbled past three corpses toward the drone. Picking it up, he held the camera ball turret firmly, pointed away from him, and jammed a splinter of brush wood into it so it couldn’t turn. He carried it to one corpse, pointed it down at the motionless body, then rolled it over so the camera could get a good view of the man’s slack face and nametag. He carried the broken drone past two more of the corpses, doing the same with each before set it down on top a small mound of dirt, where it had a panoramic view of the scattered dead and dying. One body was about twenty meters away, bloody and torn up with multiple bullet wounds but still alive and bleeding out. He had a shattered hip, arm, and lower back, and was scrabbling about and grasping with both hands helplessly, lying on his back and facing the drone, rifle too far away to reach, and beyond the reach of medical help.

  Helton looked down the line. “Police up the weapons and ammo. We may need them.”

  Seeing no enemy movement beyond the perimeter after several long minutes, Harbin and Kaminski started to walk the line to tell the companies’ men to gather ammunition from the dead and dying to supplement their very limited supply, reassure people, and count the losses. Nineteen dead, a dozen walking wounded, two missing and presumed buried in their foxholes by three very close hits, a quarter of them with some degree of hearing loss, and four alive who wouldn’t last very long without serious aid.

  Once everyone who was able to get things done was doing so, the squad leaders held a hasty conference with Kaminski, Helton, and Harbin in one of the larger foxholes.

  “Think they will shell again?” Nesbit asked.

  Harbin shook his head. “Not likely. They want confirmation of the situation first. Two companies, two radiomen down. They don’t normally use reserves in conscript actions because they are not sufficiently disciplined.”

  “Would they have marched regulars down here with them?” Moffett wonders.

  “If they did, they are hidden far enough away that the shelling wouldn’t hit them. Danger close on conscripts is common, but very rare with regular troops. Bad for morale. Their first adjustment was too large so they likely were not using a well trained forward observer to call corrections. But the drone had no markings so we can’t really know for sure.”

  “I thought you said no drones allowed?”

  “For the combatants. Could be media, or compliance monitoring. Maybe a local war groupie. Or an illegal drone.” Harbin waved that aside. “Hear anything yet, Helton?”

  The younger man shook his head before saying loudly “I can’t understand you!” He’s did his best to read lips, but figured he’s going to have to have peo
ple write notes to be clearly informed for a while.

  “You said your ship would be here. And those three you talked about as well? Where are they, you think?” Moffett asked, clearly worried.

  Kaminski shook his head. “She said midnight, didn’t say a day-“

  “We might have to stay here another day through shit like we just had?!”

  “Didn’t say that…. They knew we were here, got guys and arty here. They might have grabbed them. Damn!” Kaminski sounded frustrated and worried.

  “Allonia wouldn’t say anything, Sergeant,” Harbin said reassuringly. “And from what you have said about her I doubt Sharon could have said anything very specific. Your rally point was a point, not a time.”

  “So… Sit tight and dig deeper, move north and dig in elsewhere, move back to town, or…?”

  “And we should do something for the injured, if we can,” Nesbit added quietly, receiving slight nods and glum looks in reply. None of the options sounded appealing, and the occasional shrieks from the dying sounded worse.

  Excited shouts interrupted the meeting. Then the sound of rushing water and shots from the beach foxholes draw their attention away from the big picture they contemplated to more immediate concerns. Scanning in all directions, they rushed up to the top of the hill at the center of their perimeter semi-circle. Nothing moved on the beaches east or west. But out across the water towards the islands was a huge rushing swirl of water surging toward the coast, as if Neptune and Davey Jones had finished their card game and unleashed the Kraken to go ashore and have a snack on the beach. The bulge in the water’s surface indicated a huge displacement moving fast. Finally the shape reached shallow enough water that it broke through, revealing Tajemnica’s angular shape emerging from the depths as she closed the distance between them. Some of the conscripts were shooting at her, never having seen her before and expecting something rather more aerial by way of a starship.