by Steve Perry
– – – – – –
Sixty-three minutes . . .
Formentara looked over at Cutter. “Here it comes,” zhe said.
He knew, he was listening, but he nodded.
They had Vim’s opchan:
“—scooter approaching, coordinates—”
“—the fuck did it come from? Where’s the hole in the line—?”
“—Blue Squad, can you get a cam on that—?”
“—how the fuck did it get through—?”
“—Drone Operations, you got anything in the air close enough to intercept—?”
“—sir, but it will be right on your doorstep by the time I can shoot—”
Cutter listened, knowing what he knew, as Vim’s troops tried to deal with something that didn’t look particularly threatening but might well be.
How had the enemy found a spot to sneak this through? Well, it was easier if you were sneaking through your own lines and you knew where that was possible.
The fog of war. The uncertainty that came with bullets and bombs and enemies charging or retreating, You could never be sure exactly what was happening on the battlefield, no matter how many eyes and ears you had watching and listening. Never.
“—it’s not on our list, Colonel—”
Vim’s voice: “Okay, somebody needs to punch a hole in it, where is the recoilless thirty?”
Cutter said, “Okay. Now.”
Formentara didn’t speak, just waved hir hands over the board. “Sent.”
Okay. Let’s hope Vim’s people are as good as he wishes they are.
Come on . . . come on . . .
“—R-30mm is lined up. Should I send a round and knock it down?”
Come on . . . Come on . . .
It seemed like hours passed in the next couple of seconds.
“Hold up, hold up! Don’t shoot! This is Forward Sensors, Colonel, we have a radiation trail out there!”
“What kind of radiation trail?”
“Sir, it’s transuranic . . . it’s plutonium’s sig. Some Lithium 6, maybe . . .”
“Say again, FS.”
“Sir, we have a weapons-grade-fissionable-material reading at these coordinates.” He rattled off a series of numbers.
“Is it that scooter?”
There was a long pause.
“Sensors? Don’t dick around here!”
“Sir, I-I can’t be sure. The sig and the scooter are in approximately the same location. Nothing else there. Got to be.”
“Shit!”
Cutter could appreciate Vim’s predicament. There weren’t any nukes allowed in this engagement, absolutely not!
Tactical nuclear bombs had been used only a few times legally in corporate dustups, and those on mostly empty moons in the middle of nowhere. The idea that there was one on Earth? Rolling toward his position?
Inconceivable!
But: If it was a little nuke in that rolling box? Holy fuck!
“Colonel, I have a bead on it, I can spike it—”
“—Negative, negative, Thirty, do not fire! Nobody shoots nothin’!”
Cutter nodded to himself. Same thing he would have said. A standard box nuke, you could blast it, because it wasn’t going to go off unless the trigger clicked. Yeah, you’d spread radioactive material all over the place and you’d have to clean that up, but punching a hole in a nuke wouldn’t light it. Unless . . .
. . . unless the scooter was rigged with an impact switch. There were all kinds of timers fast enough to detonate the bomb between the time the AP round touched the armor and it punched through.
If the box was rigged that way, and you hit it hard?
Boom . . .
“Somebody call the Monitors, right fucking now! How far?”
“Seven hundred meters from the main wellhead.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Cutter felt for Vim. In this situation, there wasn’t any good response.
“Out, now! Everybody, retreat, fall back to Beta Staging, now, right fucking now!”
It’s what he wanted, but Cutter had mixed feelings about it.
Colonel Buckley had no choice. He had to assume the worst, that the bomb was there, that it was protected, that if it got close enough to the wellhead—and it might already be—it would detonate. Even a low-yield pocket nuke at ground level in this scenario would wipe out the wellheads and anybody in the open for a few blocks in any direction.
Troops under your command would die in a war, but to lose them all this way? That was futile, and no commander worth his own piss would allow that.
Of course, there wasn’t any nuke, it was fake, the signature picked up by the sensors a clever implant Formentara had built, and that sig would disappear in a few minutes, no way to trace it to its source. Everybody would assume UMex and Dycon had come up with the ruse, but nobody would blame Vim because anybody with command experience and a couple of working brain cells would make the same choice. As long as there wasn’t any actual nuke on the field, there wasn’t a lot the Monitors could do about it afterward.
We thought it was a nuke!
And you were wrong. No rule against outsmarting you. Too bad.
It was a house of cards, but Vim couldn’t risk his command. Cutter would have pulled his people out, given the same choice.
“Get to the choke point,” Cutter said. “Now all we have to do is keep Dycon away for a while.”
Forty-seven minutes . . .
THIRTY
The fake bomb was the easy part. Now, with less than a short company, Cutter had to hold off at least twice that many Dycon troops. Normally, they would get support, but given the bomb scenario, nobody would be in a hurry to move into the potential blast zone, at least nobody on their side.
For the plan to work, General Wood’s monitoring crew had to know what Colonel Buckley’s troops had done, and why, so she couldn’t send her people in.
Dycon, not having a clue about the nuke they supposedly sent, would see Vim’s troops pulling out faster than a teenaged sailor on shore leave. After a few minutes of wondering what the fuck was going on, they’d realize they could walk in and capture the objective, and they’d hurry to do that. Even if they suspected a trap, how could they pass it up? All they needed to do was be in physical control of the wellheads when the horn sounded, and they’d win.
The trick was to attack Dycon before they were through wondering what was going on.
“Colonel Cutter, this is General Wood. Where are you going?”
She knew full well, but this was for the record, and it had to stand up to what would likely be intense scrutiny.
“Colonel Buckley has lost his fucking mind! He’s retreated from his position, the wellheads are unguarded! CFI is going to cut off Dycon’s advance at the crossroads just north of here.”
“Negative. You need to stay away from the area surrounding the wellheads.”
“Say what?”
“Colonel, we have intel that indicates Dycon has a robotic nuclear device on the field. We don’t know the yield of the weapon, we need the area cleared for a minimum of two kilometers.”
“A nuke? That can’t be! The Monitors will crucify them! They’d all spend the rest of their lives in court!”
“Undoubtedly, but if the device ignites, we don’t want our people there. Back off.”
“If it’s a DC, outside a half kilometer is safe.”
“And what if it’s bigger than a DC? You can’t do it, Rags. You need to stand down.”
“It smells wrong, Zoree. It’s got to be a fake.”
“Maybe. Probably. We can’t take the chance.”
“Even if it is a tactical nuke, as long as we stay outside a klick, we’re probably good. We head them off that far out; otherwise, they just waltz in and take it!”
“What are the Monitors doing about it?”
“They are investigating.”
“By the time they figure out what’s going on, we will have lost the fucking war. Sorting it out later might take forever.”
“I’m sorry, nobody wants to win more than I do, but that is the situation.”
He let that lie.
“Rags? You there?”
“My com is acting up,” he said. “Say again?”
“Don’t do it!”
“General Wood? I can’t read you. Must be the damned trees. We are almost in position and well outside tactical-nuclear-blast radius. General Wood?”
“Dammit, Colonel, do not—”
That should be enough for the record.
He shut off his link.
“Okay, people, let’s get set. Company is coming, and we need to make sure they don’t get past us.”
Forty minutes . . .
– – – – – –
Kay caught a glimpse of Grey as the enemy troops approached, in vehicles and on foot. He was running fast, he was too far away, and then he was lost in the dust before she could get her sights lined up on him. At this juncture, in a frontal assault, she’d have plenty of other targets. No finesse in this situation, it was going to come down to who shot better, who was steadier, who was willing to hold or give ground.
– – – – – –
Jo stood by the medical crawler with Wink, watching the dust as the opposing army approached. “Stay inside the crawler,” she said.
“Sure,” Wink said. “Absolutely. Biggest target on the field, first thing the assholes shoot at, every time.”
“A live doctor is useful,” she said. “A dead one, not so much. Although in your case it might be six to one, half a dozen to the other. And don’t say, ‘You wound me.’”
He grinned. “Well, you do, you know. Be safe, Jo.”
“I’ll try.”
Twenty-six minutes . . .
THIRTY-ONE
Parked in the Command Cart with Rags, Jo looked through the windshield at the Dycon line ahead. She knew what their CO must be thinking: What the fuck? First, the unit that had the wellheads secured and locked into a sure win just up and fucking left! And now, another company was rolling toward them at speed! Why? Why didn’t they just take over the wellheads? They could hold off a larger force for the twenty minutes before the whistle sounded—
What the fuck?
Rags, on the opchan:
“Okay, people, everybody park and throw what you got, TOA. War is going to be called in eighteen minutes, no point in us saving ammo. Light it and flight it.”
If the officers in the field wondered what the hell he was doing, nobody brought it up. Jo would have asked if she hadn’t known what she knew.
The first streamers following their rockets appeared, and the booms of RCLRs began, joined by the machine guns and assorted grenade launchers and mortars.
If it didn’t catch the opposition totally by surprise, it certainly gave them something to think about.
They returned fire, and the battle began.
– – – – – –
“—two APCs coming from the south, mortars, you see ’em—?”
“—copy, L1, we have them, keep your head down—”
“—body spike that grenadier, he’s walking ’em right at us—”
“—man down, man down, can I get a medic these coordinates—?”
Jo said, “There’s a gap in our coverage, seven hundred meters west, we have enemy boots approaching. Kay?”
“Here.”
“Let’s go.”
Nine minutes.
– – – – – –
“—somebody lay some grenades on top of that APC—”
“—got two men down here, I need a medic—”
“—you think, asshole? Eat this—!”
– – – – – –
Jo looked at the overview, listened to the chatter. Dycon was attacking, and CFI was getting hammered, but they were holding.
For now. Another seven minutes to go, and it was iffy; the numbers didn’t favor them.
Shit.
No help for it now, they were committed—
“Jo, we got help coming, hang on!”
“What?”
“A company of Vim’s troops, from Dycon’s rear.”
“Christus, with an atomic bomb about to go off?”
“Volunteers,” Rags said. “And Colonel Buckley is leading them.”
Jo laughed. “Got more balls than brains. But we won’t be able to get back to the wellheads in time.”
“Even so, nice to know they won’t let you get shot to pieces out there. Maybe we can’t win, but maybe we won’t lose, either.”
“I’m gonna buy the man the biggest steak in Tejas,” she said. “Ow!”
“Jo?”
“Some asshole shot me! Hold on a second . . .”
She examined the wound. Through her lat, just under the left arm.
“Jo?”
“Still here. It’s a through-and-through, didn’t hit anything serious.
“No problem,” she said, “minor.” She allowed her neurochem to flood some painkiller dorph into her system.
“And I’ll make sure Vim has something good to wash his steak down,” Rags said.
– – – – – –
Two minutes.
One minute.
– – – – – –
The Monitors sent the signal, and it blew across every open channel in range, the traditional ten-second countdown:
“ATTENTION COMBATANTS: HOSTILITIES MUST CEASE IN TEN SECONDS . . . NINE . . . EIGHT . . .”
Jo, her wound already itching under the pressure-stik bandage, worked her com: “Almost done. Nobody on either side is at the wellheads.”
Rags said, “We didn’t lose.”
“But we didn’t win, either.”
“. . . THREE . . . TWO . . .”
Almost a kilometer behind Jo, the fake-nuke robot exploded. It was simple-chemical, but sufficient to scatter the thing over a couple of hundred meters. Didn’t do any damage where it was when it went up, save for a shallow crater in the ground under it.
The horn sounded: Ooogah!
The Tejano Conflict was over. Neither side got the water they wanted.
THIRTY-TWO
Junior’s rage was palpable even though he tried to keep his voice low and even; he couldn’t keep it from seeping through:
“You need to pay me a visit, Cutter, and I don’t mean tomorrow or after lunch, I mean right now.”
“Sure, Junior. I’ll be around directly.”
He waved the com off, glanced at the time sig. “I’m surprised he waited this long.”
Gunny stood there. Gunny had a burned patch on her shoulder armor but didn’t look otherwise damaged from the grenade fragment that had bounced off her.
“Gunny?”
“Of course Ah can do it, but Ah’m not sure Ah should.”
Cutter nodded. “I understand, but you need to trust me on this, Gunny.”
She looked at him. “What if you are wrong?”
“Then we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Gunny shook her head. “I never liked Pachelbel’s Canon. I don’t want to have to listen to it at your fucking funeral.”
“Me, neither.”
– – – – – –
In Junior’s office, he was on his feet, waiting.
“Come in, Cutter. I’d ask you to have a seat, but you won’t have very long to get tired standing.”
The door closed behind Cutter.
Junior raised his sidearm and pointed it at Cutter. From four meters, it would be hard to miss
.
Cutter kept his hands spread wide, away from his own weapon.
“Take your pistol out, two fingers, and put in on the floor.”
Cutter did so, moving slowly and carefully.
“Shove it over here with your foot.”
Cutter obeyed.
Junior came around from behind his desk and bent to collect Cutter’s gun. He glanced at the condition-read, nodded. He pointed it at Cutter, moved back behind his desk, and opened a drawer. He put his pistol into the drawer and closed it.
“What’s the matter, Cutter? No cries of outrage, no ‘What are you doing, Junior?’”
Cutter shook his head.
“You know, my father never said so, but I know he thought you were a better soldier than I was. When you were cashiered out? He knew you’d been set up to take the fall, and I’m sure he knew it was my doing, but he never spoke to that, either.”
Cutter remained silent.
“You fucked me on this war. You worked it so it ended in a draw, and that cost me a shitload of money. You were supposed to win.”
“You wanted us to win, why did you send an assassin after me?”
“You’re a fucking moron, you know that? I didn’t think for a second that clown had a chance of killing you! That was just to keep you looking the wrong way.”
Cutter thought about that. “What about the bribe Dhama offered?”
“Not a chance in hell your people would have taken it. You are all too fucking honorable for shit like that. And if they had? They would have been put to work doing something that didn’t matter anyhow. It was just more misdirection.”
Cutter didn’t speak to that.
“I never liked you, Cutter, but this war was your side’s to give away! Wood should have kicked their asses seven ways to Sunday! Why the hell did you throw it?”
“Justice. Balance.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We looked at the bottom line. We won, you got rich. We lost, you got rich. Nobody wanted that. Nobody likes you, Junior.”
“You fucker!”
“Just part of it. We figured out what the two factions wanted. One side is religious, they want the water for their ceremonies. The other side is secular, they think religion is a shackle. If they had won, they would have poisoned the water or blown up the wells.
