Hell's Faire lota-4

by John Ringo

  There was another pause and he smiled. “If you’re pounding your head on the TC controls, it’s okay. So am I.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Chan called back as Pruitt keyed the controls.

  * * *

  “Hold it there, Pruitt,” Chan said, flipping to the company frequency. “Number Five, you’re up. Everybody watch where the previous turret has fired,” she continued as the blast of fire arched over the nearby ridgeline. “I want to try to saturate the area on the other side of the ridge.”

  She nodded as the SheVa turret began to rotate. Pruitt apparently could feel the MetalStorm fire even in the heavily armored control room and had rotated automatically when five had finished its shot. And he did it again when six was done. So she could quit worrying about it.

  Time to find something else to worry about.

  She popped her head out of the TC’s hatch and watched as Glenn manipulated the loader. There were four packs, three 40s and a 105, connected to the SheVa’s top directly behind the turret. The loader was a multi-angularity forklift that connected to special points on the bottom of the packs. Once it was connected, which was the most ticklish part, all that Glenn had to do was hit the “Load Sequence” button and the multi-ton pack was lifted through three dimensions and carefully dropped into the gun-cradle. Once in place the gun system inserted the pintle and trunnions making the whole system ready to fire.

  Simple. So simple that they’d be reloaded before Nine’s turn to fire came up. And so would Nine. The question was whether to continue the fire-mission.

  There were packs stashed in the interior. But to get to those would require the crane and someone, Pruitt probably, who was qualified to operate it. Which meant an hour or so to replace all her ready-packs. Which meant she really didn’t want to shoot off all her reloads blind.

  “Colonel Mitchell,” she said, switching back over to intercom. “I recommend we give them one stonk from here and then either move forward to the ridgeline or begin our movement towards Franklin.”

  * * *

  Mitchell was regretting releasing Kitteket. The specialist had been dumped on them by accident during the retreat, but having someone to handle all the communications had turned out to useful. SheVas, by and large, did not do a lot of communicating. They mostly stayed in place or were moved by careful coordination of the local force commanders, who “owned” the SheVas as attachments. Operations orders, movement orders and communications were laid out days in advance. Otherwise they tended to run over such unimportant obstacles as front-lines, headquarters or, in one particularly unpleasant accident, the entire logistics “tail” of divisions. There was a reason that SheVa crewmen referred to everything other than SheVas, including “lesser” armor, as “crunchies.”

  But the battle for the Tennessee Valley had been a wild scramble and, as far as Mitchell knew, he was an independent command under Army headquarters. Which meant that he wasn’t in the decision loop of the local division. Furthermore, the entire battle both in retreat and advance had been, of necessity, much more fluid than most battles that involved something the size of the Great Pyramids. And then there were the MetalStorms.

  All of that meant far more communication load than was normal for a SheVa commander.

  Which was Mitchell’s problem at the moment.

  “Wait one, Vickie,” he said, switching back to another frequency. “Whiskey Five Echo Six-Four, this is SheVa Nine, over.”

  “SheVa Nine, you are not authorized on this net.”

  “Great, Echo Six-Four. I’m glad you have such great commo security. The point is that we’re about to make a movement forward and unless we can coordinate it, we’ll run over about two companies of your troops, over.” He was on the division command net and he knew he was supposed to be on a support net, probably a dedicated one. That was how they usually ran SheVas. But he didn’t have a correct frequency. All he had was a hastily scribbled note that said “Local Division” and a frequency.

  Welcome to the Real and the Nasty, boys.

  “SheVa Nine, authenticate Victor Foxtrot.”

  “Look, first of all the damned net is compromised in case you hadn’t been told. Including the current SOI. Second of all, I don’t have your SOI. So, I’m sorry, I can’t authenticate. Look, we’re this great big metal thing on a ridge near Green’s Creek. If you look closely, we have ‘U.S. Defense Force SheVa Nine’ on our side and we have a great big picture of a mini-lop rabbit on the front. And we’re getting ready to roll over one of your battalions. So can we quit the commo games?!”

  “SheVa Nine, this is Grizzly Six, over.” The voice was gruff with a slight accent. It fit the name.

  “Grizzly Six, this is SheVa Nine, over.” Six meant a commander. Hopefully the commander of the unit they were about to run over so that maybe the crunchies would get out of the way.

  “You’re right, the SOI is compromised. But that doesn’t mean you’re you. Rotate your turret back and forth.”

  “Hang one, Grizzly, we’re completing a stonk.” Mitchell unkeyed the radio and looked over at Pruitt. “Pruitt, where we at?”

  “That was eight. We’re done. Vickie wants to hold onto her ready ammo.”

  “Okay, rotate the turret back and forth a bit. And don’t you ever call her Vickie around me again.”

  “Will do, boss,” the gunner replied, with a shrug. He tapped the controls back and forth. “What was that in aid of?”

  “No idea,” the commander replied. “But at least we’re talking to the locals again.” He keyed the microphone and took a breath. “Grizzly Six, have complied.”

  “Roger, welcome to the net,” the commander said. “It will take me at least ten minutes to get those troops prepared to move. Where do you want to go?”

  “There’s a saddle on the ridge, directly across from the Savannah Baptist Church. UTM looks to be… North 391111 East 293868.”

  Mitchell no longer considered the odd nature of reply. Grid coordinates worked off of imaginary “lines” on maps and depending on the number of digits used, the accuracy of the location got higher and higher. At eight digits the accuracy of the location was less than a meter. So what he had just done was give a location that was accurate to the millimeter. For a “tank” that was a hundred meters wide.

  Often he got asked about it. Normally in the military, when someone was just reading a map, they would use, at most, six digits for a location coordinate. So when he gave locations in twelve digit coordinates, it occasioned comment. His answer was fairly simple: The location tracker in the SheVa guns read out in twelve-digit coordinates.

  He didn’t know why it did; maybe he ought to ask Kilzer. But it gave twelve numbers. When faced with the numbers, he had one of two choices. He could figure out how to round them off to a six-digit coordinate, which would be normal, or he could just read them off the screen. Rounding them off wasn’t hard, it just took a few seconds, was prone to error and distracted you, often in the middle of a fire-fight. Abstract thought in combat was a good way to end up a hole in the ground and so was taking a few seconds on a nonessential task. So he just read the damned things off the screen.

  “Understood, SheVa,” the commander replied after a moment. “I’ll call you when the movement is approved, do not make the movement until I call.”

  “Roger, be aware that it is my intention after firing from that position to move backwards and then do a movement out of this zone of control. I prefer not to discuss that over open channels. Please advise the appropriate people. Over.”

  “Concur. After your fire, we’ll do lunch.”

  “Roger, Grizzly.”

  “Grizzly Six, out.”

  “Whew,” Mitchell said. “Anybody know if that was the battalion commander or what?”

  “The unit in this area is the 147th Infantry Division,” Kilzer replied not looking up from where he was doodling in his notebook. “Its logo is a grizzly bear.”

  “Oh, shit,” Mitchell moaned. “That was the division commander?�
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  * * *

  Arkady Simosin was learning about second chances.

  Not many corps commanders that lost eighty percent of their corps got a second chance. Most of them never commanded so much as a mess-kit repair company. So he supposed he should be happy.

  After First Washington he had been relieved and demoted to colonel. The only reason he hadn’t been kicked out of the Army entirely was that the board of inquiry noted that the hacking of his corps artillery system had been impossible to anticipate or prevent and that there was a critical shortage of officers trained in modern techniques. So he found himself a colonel, again, working in the Third Army Group J-3 office of Plans and Training.

  In time he had even stood for brigadier, again. Three times. The first two had been blackballs; one or more members of the flag officer promotion board had felt him unacceptable as a general officer. The third time, though, he had been passed. In the old days you only had one pass at flag rank, but with the war continuing and even generals occasionally becoming Posleen fodder, the rules had been loosened. Slightly.

  He’d stayed in Army J-3 then transferred to the Asheville Corps when it became obvious the only “plans” they had were survival.

  Asheville was a tough case. The five divisions in its Line had all sustained hundreds of days of combat. With the exception of some of the fortress cities on the plains, Asheville had probably had the toughest fight of all. There were at least three “easy” approaches to the city and the Posleen had hit it, hard, after each of the main landing waves. Landers, C-Decs and Lampreys, had managed to brave the Planetary Defense Center and even land inside the defenses. Probing attacks, really just the odd God King that either didn’t know any better or got a scale up its butt, were a constant problem.

  So the units that were actually in the line, usually three of the five divisions, got very little rest and virtually no training. And the two divisions that were out of the line tended to take that fact as permission to just fuck off. That was part of the rationale for replacement and two thirds of the time away from the line was specifically designated as “refit and refresh.” But what they were supposed to do with the rest of their time was train. Improve the individual skills of the personnel, run the officers through “tactical exercises without troops” and do small unit tactical training.

  What they did, instead, all of the divisions, was fill in the blocks on their paperwork and let their units fuck off.

  This had become obvious at least a year before when a small Posleen force had taken a position on Butler Mountain and used it for intermittent harassing fire on the support forces. First a battalion, then a brigade, and finally an entire division of the “rest and refit” units had been sent forward to try to dislodge the Posleen force that was not much larger than a company. The God King in charge was tenacious and smart, to the point of rebuilding the defense positions and occupying them, but it shouldn’t have taken a division to dislodge him. And if any of the other Posleen in the area had conceived of reinforcing him, Asheville might have fallen.

  The problem was that the Line units had become specialists at running their automated guns and had forgotten everything else. Or never been taught it.

  The Corps G-3 and commander were relieved and the incoming G-3 had asked for Arkady. So he had found himself in charge of “evaluating” individual unit training.

  What he’d found was even worse than anticipated. There were entire units that had never even zeroed their individual weapons or boresighted their heavy weapons. There was an armor storage site with sufficient tracks for two brigades, but none of the brigades had trained on them in three years.

  The first thing that he did was cut the “rest and refit” to one third of the “rear area” period. He knew it wasn’t enough time, that units would go back into the line insufficiently rested, but until they learned how to be soldiers again rest would have to wait.

  Then, with the concurrence of the G-3, he began finding out which of the blocks were “real” and which ones were in the imagination of the unit commanders. There were a few of those who were relieved and others whose feelings were going to be hurt for a long time. Oh. Well. It was about making sure the soldiers were ready to fight, not just sit in their positions and let the Posleen impale themselves on their weapons.

  Physical training, weapons training, tactical training, small unit tactics and mechanized infantry, all of it was crammed in. Along with testing to ensure proficiency on their basic job of, yes, maintaining the automated weapons of the Wall.

  Slowly, by cajoling and checking and running around at least eighteen hours per day for the better part of a year and a half, he got some of the units to the point that they could find their ass with two hands. One of the ones that couldn’t was the 147th.

  It was never their fault, of course. It seemed that every time they fell back for refit, they had taken massive casualties on the Wall. Where other units would sustain five or ten percent wounded and killed in a mass attack, the 147th ended up taking thirty, forty even fifty percent casualties. So they had a constant need for new recruits. And the recruits always arrived half trained.

  After the second time the 147th came through the rest, train and refit cycle, Arkady took a trip up to the Wall when they were returned. The unit had left the rear-area training cycle with, as he well knew, the recruits barely familiar with maintaining and rearming their weapons. But instead of starting a vigorous training series up on the Wall, the division had proceeded to squat in place like so many units of slugs. The few recruits that he talked to all knew they didn’t know how to fight the Posleen even from such heavily fortified positions. But their officers and NCOs rebuffed their requests for advanced training. And in the case of the “veterans” the opinion seemed to be that it was pointless training newbies. Most of them were going to get killed in the first attack, anyway. Why bother?

  Of course it was never their fault.

  One of the few military aphorisms that Arkady firmly believed was inviolable was “there are no bad regiments, just bad officers.” His brief was specifically for rear area retrain and refit but a word in the G-3’s ear was enough for the “ongoing training” officer to start paying special attention to the 147th’s methods, just in time for the next attack.

  If anyone had figured out how to read the Posleen mind, it surely wasn’t the Asheville Corps G-2. Marshall was a decent guy but the Posleen were just beyond him, or his analysts. Arkady had been in the daily “dog and pony show,” to watch his briefer deliver their daily sermon. He turned up from time to time, just to make sure “his” major didn’t decide to start speaking in tongues or anything. “Trust but verify” was a decent statement for leadership as well as nuclear diplomacy.

  The young lieutenant colonel from G-2 — they all looked like kids these days with rejuv but you could tell this guy was a kid, no more than thirty five, maybe forty — had just finished his presentation, in which he had concluded that “only two out of thirty-five indices call for a major Posleen attack in the next week.” In other words, everybody could kick back and relax. Just finished, and the Corps Arty guy was about halfway through his daily delivery of Valium in the form of innumerable columns of more or less incomprehensible numbers:

  “Average tube wear rate per battery per day has been trending downward for the last month and a half while consumption versus resupply of standard ammunition types has, happily, been trending upwards. Based upon G-2 analysis of probable future Posleen intentions it is likely that we can begin getting ahead of the tube-wear power curve in no more than three more months. The last quarter has seen significant increases in trunnion stress analysis training among the second-tier maintenance personnel.” All delivered in a deadly dry monotone. It was always the same briefer from Corps Arty and it was one reason that the daily dog and pony show was a must avoid for most of the senior officers that might otherwise attend.

  Arkady had just started to drift off, the previous day had been another long one, when the
Corps chief of staff, who had to attend this thing every day, it was a wonder the man hadn’t shot the red-leg by now, stood up and, with a decidedly ambiguous expression, stopped the presentation.

  “Thanks, Jack, that was just great, as usual, but the 193rd is reporting a heavy attack on the I-40 Wall. I think we all need to get back to our sections and earn our pay.”

  A serious Posleen attack would mean thousands of casualties by nightfall and if it was tough enough it might mean hell and blood for days on end or, if they did their jobs wrong, the fall of the city and millions of civilian casualties. Serious attacks in the past had come close. But it was pretty clear that everyone else in the room was trying to stop themselves from cheering. They’d managed to avoid the rest of the Corps Artillery presentation! Hooray!

  The 193rd got hit in the first attack and then the second attack hit the 147th. Which promptly, for all practical purposes, went away. It sustained over fifty percent casualties in the assault and if it hadn’t been for one of the reserve divisions relieving it the Wall would have fallen.

  Which meant that something had to be done.

  As soon as it was recruited back up to strength, Arkady had scrapped the original training schedule, which emphasized a range of skills, and concentrated on getting the recruits up to proficiency in their basic combat duties. The division commander had protested that the training regime was contrary to Ground Force policy and he was right. But the choice seemed to be an entirely unprepared division or one that could at least survive in a fixed position.

  He had been in the midst of the retraining program when the Posleen assault on Rabun Gap, and another major assault on Asheville, had hit.

  The assault had immediately forced the 193rd, which was also in its rest phase, to be moved into the Line. And the 147th would have followed. But then the Posleen took Rabun Gap and started charging up the back hallway to Asheville.