A Hymn Before Battle

12 Ft. Bragg, NC Sol III 0907 December 15th, 2001 ad

The barracks 2^nd Battalion 325^th Airborne Infantry Regiment occupied were temporary buildings from World War II. They were wooden fire traps and the double-decker bunks were relics of an earlier day as well, but they continued to adequately serve the purpose of temporary shelter for units preparing to embark from Pope Air Force Base. Well over the age of the senior member of Congress, until some local official pushed through a bill to replace them they would have to do.

The 325^th was preparing to embark for Diess, a planet that until the previous week no one in the regiment had ever heard of. The powers that be had decided that until their departure they should be “locked down,” placed incommunicado, and thus they lingered here in “C-LOC,” an acronym that none of them could decipher.

Those with loved ones were completely cut off from communication, for no reason anyone could determine. The barracks were damp, cold and uncomfortable and they had no opportunity to train, since their equipment, including their suits, had been palletized for ease of loading. The food was miserable, tray rations morning and night with MREs for lunch. The skies had been cold, gray and sodden with rain since they left their battalion area. They faced an unknown enemy, reputed to be unstoppable, on a distant planet. And in the case of Bravo Company, Third Platoon, Second Squad, with a squad leader sunk in black depression.

Sergeant Duncan pushed the door open and slumped into the nearest bunk. His troops, grouped at their end of the barracks, looked up from a variety of tasks, some make-work, mostly recreational. There was an endless spades game between four of the squad. Two more of the squad were playing handheld computer games, one was reading and the rest were either sleeping or cleaning equipment. They waited a moment to see if Duncan was going to pass on any information, then all of them went back to the serious business of ignoring their current existence.

Duncan stared at his boots for a moment and then straightened. “The shuttles are landing this afternoon,” he said and yawned, “but we’re not loading yet.”

“Why?” asked one of the card players.

“Who the fuck knows,” said Duncan, tonelessly. “Probably for the same reason we’re in this fuckin’ icebox with our thumbs up our ass.”

“It’s like somebody wants us to fuck up!” snarled Specialist Arlo Schrenker and hurled his book across the room.

“Wadda ya mean?” said Private Second Class Roy Bittan, trumping with a four.

“Cheep, cheep, cheep,” chirped Specialist Dave Sanborn, the Bravo team leader, scooping in the trick. “He means that if we don’t get some fuckin’ practice with those suits we’re gonna be fucked.”

“F-U-C… K-E-D… A-G-A-I-N!” sang Sergeant Michael Brecker, the Alpha Team leader, covering Bittan’s queen with an ace on the next trick. “We might have done something with the equipment we’re trained with, cherry, but we’re gonna get corncobbed by the fuckin’ Posleen ’cause we don’ know shit about how to use those fuckin’ suits.”

“Yeah,” said Schrenker lurching to his feet and pacing between the steel-framed bunk beds. “That’s what I mean. I mean, we can’t train here, we didn’t get to train ’cause we had to get ready for EIB, we didn’t get a fuckin’ ARTEP, to show ’em we’re fucked and there’s no way we’re gonna be able to train on the ships, right? So it’s like somebody wants us to fuck up! Why the fuck are they sending us, huh? Why not send the fuckin’ armor or the goddamn cav? Why fuckin’ Airborne? We’re like, lightweight assault troops not plodders. I mean, what? They gonna drop us from orbit?”

“The Airborne and Marines are all getting the suits,” said Bittan, studying the sergeant’s king at length.

“Come on, any day now. Get up or go home. Where’d you hear that?”

“My buddy in S-4. They’re gonna group us together as some new group. An’ he said we’re gonna get some hotshot from GalTech Infantry to help us train up.” He finally tossed a low trump on the king. “I think I’m startin’ to get the hang of this game.”

“Thank fucking God,” said his partner.

“Yeah,” said Duncan, pulling out the recently issued field manual and flipping to the second page. “O’Neal, Michael L., First Lieu… nah.”

“What?” said Schrenker.

“There used to be an O’Neal with the One Five-O-Five. Come to think of it he was Horner’s driver and Horner is the head of GalTech. I wonder if it’s the same guy?”

“What’s he like?” asked Schrenker.

“Short, hasn’t got much of a short guy’s attitude though, ’cause he’s built like a fuckin’ tank, big-time lifter. Ugly as sin. Quiet, but kinda wise guy when he opens his mouth. Doesn’t give ‘no-brainers’ much slack. Gotta punch like a mule.”

“When’d you meet him?” asked Schrenker.

“ ’97? ’98?”

“Where’d you find out about his punch?” asked Bittan, fascinated.

“Rick’s.” Duncan answered shortly, naming off an infamous topless bar in Fayetteville. “There’s some interesting shit in this,” he continued flipping through the field manual.

“Like what? How to play tiddlywinks while wearing a suit?” asked Brecker, taking the last trick with a ten of diamonds. “Shit, gotta sandbag.”

“No, shithead, how to fuckin’ survive,” snapped Duncan.

“Hey, asshole!” snarled Brecker, tossing aside the trick and surging to his feet, pointing his finger like a knife. “If I wanna hear shit from you, I’ll squeeze your head ’til it pops!”

“You’d better at the fuck ease, Sergeant,” snarled Duncan in turn, his teeth drawn back in a rictus. The rest of the squad was frozen watching the arguing NCOs. The long-awaited clash had taken everyone, including the principals, by surprise. Duncan slammed the field manual to the floor when the other sergeant refused to back down. “And you better at ease right fuckin’ now,” he continued. “If you have something to say, we need to take it outside,” he ended, sounding nearly normal, but the hard lines of his face were unchanged.

Brecker’s face worked, his anger and pride driving him into a corner, but the discipline that had enabled him to reach his current rank forced the words out, “Okay, let’s take it outside, Sergeant.” The last word was a spat epithet.

The two NCOs stalked outside with the hard eyes of the squad trailing after.

“Okay,” snapped Duncan, stopping and spinning to face the shorter NCO as they turned the corner of the barracks, “what the fuck is eating your ass?”

“You, you fucked up son of a bitch!” growled the junior NCO, restraining a shout with difficulty. They were standing just off the company street and both recognized the danger they were in. Overt conflict would mean instant punishment from the present chain of command. “This was my goddamn squad before you got shoved down our throat and it’s fallin’ fuckin’ apart! Get your shit together, dammit!”

Duncan’s face was as cold and gray as the skies but he could not find an immediate rebuttal. Given the silence, Brecker continued his attack.

“I could give a fuck how we got you. If you got off your ass. But I can’t order the fuckin’ squad around while you pout, they won’t listen. So quit your cryin’ you shit and lead! Lead, follow or get out of my fuckin’ way!”

“Oh, so you know all there is about bein’ a squad leader?” whispered Duncan, clenching his fists convulsively. He was on the defensive, knowing the truth of the accusation.

“I know I gotta do more than sit on my ass and mope!”

“Oh, yeah?…” Duncan suddenly turned away from the hot eyes on him and looked at the blank wall of the barracks. He felt tears welling up and abruptly changed the subject. “Ten fuckin’ years Brecker. Ten fuckin’ years in this shit-hole. I can’t get away from it. I put myself on levee to Panama or Korea or any other shit-hole just to get out and get graded as vital or talked into staying by the CO. Then the fuckin’ chain-of-command changes and the new CO thinks I’m uselesser than dirt. But then there’s no levees. I re-up for something else and get classified as critical so I can’t change my MOS. The only fuckin’ way out of Bragg would be to terminate my airborne status, but that’s just another word for quittin’. Finally, finally I get my fuckin’ staff stripes, like four years after I should have gotten ’em and now this. I just cannot fuckin’ face it, I can’t.”

“You gotta. At least they left you some rank. I would’ve sent you to Leavenworth.”

“They couldn’t have.”

“You cut Reed’s legs off, you bastard! Of course they could have!”

“Yeah, you knew him, didn’t you?”

“We were in the same Basic fuckin’ platoon, yeah I knew him.”

“They couldn’t have court-martialed me and won,” Duncan muttered. “I mean, it wouldn’t have even gotten past the JAG. I didn’t know that at the time. I should have let ’em. It was experimental equipment, all of it is. It would be the same as court-martialing a test pilot for punching out of plane or us for not jumping. I should not have been able to do what that thing did. You just don’t issue equipment like that, you don’t. If it was anybody’s fault, it was GalTech’s for issuing that piece of crap.”

“We’ve still got ’em!”

“They re-issued ’em, remember? You can’t get them to generate the same field; I tried.”

“What?”

“I was careful this time. It won’t do it, anyway. But the point is, you can court-martial someone for not following proper regs, but when an accident is not covered by training or experience there are clear regulations that state that an individual cannot be prosecuted for it, no matter what the consequences. So should I be a sergeant now? You tell me?”

“You should be a fuckin’ civilian,” snapped Brecker, but it was without heat. He could see the logic of the argument, whatever his personal dislike. “But this isn’t about whether you should be a sergeant, it’s about whether you should be a squad leader. Are you gonna get it together or not?”

“I don’ know,” admitted Duncan wearily. He slumped to a squatting position and leaned against the sodden barracks wall as the runoff soaked into his beret. “Every other time I felt crapped on I was able to shake it off, but this time it’s so hard.”

“You didn’t get crapped on, you idiot, they gave you a walk.”

“No, I got some pretty good scuttlebutt that the colonel was aware of the reg. He could have let me walk on the basis of it, and I could request a review, probably, and get my stripes back, that’s what I’m trying to work out. But while I’m thinkin’ about that, I’m not thinkin’ about the squad.”

“Yeah, well you better start thinkin’ about your responsibilities or Top’s gonna certify you as unfit and bust you to specialist.”

“ ‘Slippin’ down the ladder rung by rung,’ ” whispered Duncan.

“Yeah, you are,” agreed Brecker, tightly, not recognizing the quote. “But you don’t gotta. All you need to do is wake up a little, maybe do some extra training and they can’t do it.”

“Yeah,” said Duncan, as a thought hit him like a brick. He paused for a moment and considered it. He felt as if a black cloth had been taken off of his eyes. “You read that FM?”

“No, what’s the point, we don’t have suits to train in.”

“No, but we got PT uniforms.”

“Yeah,” agreed Brecker, bitterly, not yet noticing the sudden change. “Like we’re gonna do any running on Diess. The only fuckin’ running we’re gonna do is away.”

“There’s the field here,” muttered Duncan, continuing a different conversation. His mind was starting to turn furiously.

“Yeah, let’s go run around the track. It works for the colonel, night and day. Come rain, come shine, there’s the colonel, motivating us to run on a muddy track by his own example. I’m sure the squad would love to go running all day and night in the rain. Not.”

“ ‘In the absence of available suits, suit drills can and should be conducted in lightweight physical training uniforms, using either standard issue or field expedient simulations of standard suit weapons and equipment.’ ”

“What?”

“It’s in the FM. That’s the new training schedule. I’ll go talk to Sergeant Green. Get the guys pulling out their PT uniforms.”

“It is pissing down out here, you know,” said Brecker, gesturing at the sodden skies.

“Big whoop, they’re infantry, they can handle a little rain. And get ’em thinkin’ about what to simulate their weapons with.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You’re the one who wants to survive, right?”

“Yeah, but…”

“So we gotta train, ’in the absence of suits…’ ”

“Yeah, so we run around a muddy field in fuckin’ sweats? Why not BDUs?”

“You wanna run in boots? Get shin splints? I mean, we are gonna be runnin’, not joggin’, that’s the essence of suit drills.”

“But…”

“Get moving, Sergeant Brecker. I’ll go see the platoon sergeant.”

“Okay…”

“Duncan, what have you been smoking?”

The senior NCO’s room was simply a closed-off corner of the barracks. Across from it was another enclosure to be used as an office; unfortunately the Army in its infinite wisdom had not seen fit to furnish that room at all. The furniture in the platoon sergeant’s bedroom was virtually identical to the platoon’s: a steel bed frame with an uncovered mattress. The platoon sergeant’s bed was made as neatly as possible with a poncho liner and Gortex sleeping bag. Sergeant Green had been hunched over the new field manual, fighting off incipient flu, when Duncan entered. One of the other squad leaders had already told him of the harsh words between Duncan and Brecker and their abrupt exit, so he was expecting a report that the fight the other NCOs in the company had been expecting had finally occurred. Duncan’s rapidly delivered request had caught him completely off guard.

“Nothing, Sergeant,” Duncan replied, shocked. It was not that drug use was unknown in the Army, it was just that it was as relentlessly sought out and as rigorously persecuted as homosexuality or communism in the forties and fifties. It was extremely unlikely that he had smoked, dipped, popped, shot or snorted anything not prescribed since his entry ten years before or he would not have lasted ten years. “I just think we’re missing a golden opportunity.”

“So, what is it you want to do?”

“I want to take the squad out to do suit drills, on the parade field. I mean, those movement methods are completely different than what we’re used to. I want to get out there and start working on coordination and timing. I really like the systems they’ve worked out, the way the units move and coordinate. And it would get the squad off its ass, an’, hell, it’d get me off my ass, too.”

“Yeah,” said Sergeant Green after a moment’s consideration. He had been looking at the same sections and wondering when they could start training on it. But the suggestion in the manual about training without suits had not caught his eye. “Okay, I want to get with Top about the rest of it, but here’s what I want you to do. Take your squad out and start them training. Get them as picture perfect as you can. If we stay here three more days, I’ll try to get the rest of the company out there also, and your squad will demonstrate. How’s that?”

“Great!” The first grin Sergeant Green had seen on Duncan since his Article 15 flashed across his face. “We’ll get right on it!”

“Keep the faith, Sergeant,” Green said with a nod. As Duncan bounded out of the room, one of the crushing weights on his shoulders lifted.

The squad was lined up in a wedge formation, with Sergeant Duncan at the apex. He turned to face the eight unhappy looking troops in gray PT sweat suits.

“Right,” he said as the skies began to drizzle again. “The difference between ACS and normal infantry tactics is that ACS calls for much more in the way of shock and speed tactics. Airborne infantry is deliberate compared to ACS; ACS is more like armored cav. We’re going to train on a few simple maneuvers at first. Think of them like football plays: wedge, echelon right, echelon left, lean right, lean left and bounding line. And the only way to train for open field ACS combat is at the run. We’re going to start off slow then work up to speed. Don’t worry, you won’t be noticing the rain a’tall in just a bit.”

“Captain Brandon, sir, it’s the S-3,” called the company clerk through the open door of the commander’s office.

Bob Brandon had been more than halfway expecting the call since his company began intense ACS drills in the parade field two days before. He picked up the extension phone reluctantly. “Captain Brandon.”

“Bob, it’s Major Norton.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why are your troops training in ACS drills?”

“It seemed the thing to do, sir. We are an ACS unit.”

If Major Norton noted the sarcasm, he declined to comment. “The problem is, too many of these ACS tactics need review. The colonel and I have been studying the manuals and when we’re ready, and by that I mean Operations, we’ll publish a training schedule of what we want trained on. There’s too much armor and not enough infantry in their damned tactics, they’ll get us all killed if we use half that stuff! In the meantime you are to stick to the prescribed training schedule, do you understand that, Captain?”

“Yes, sir. Might I point out that the training schedule calls for equipment maintenance. Our equipment is stored with the S-4.”

“I know what the training schedule calls for, dammit, I wrote it, remember? Next week’s is being revised for some of that ACS work, work that the colonel and I have reviewed and agree with, and until then you are to continue with the published schedule! Am I making myself perfectly clear, Captain, or do I have to have the colonel call you and explain it in greater detail?”

“No, sir, that won’t be necessary. I’ll be speaking to the colonel about this at length in the near future.”

“And this is… ?” asked Sergeant Duncan, holding up a flash card. “Sanborn?”

“Umm, a Lamprey?”

“Right, and a Lamprey is… ?” he asked, referring to the information on the back of the card.

“A landing craft. Umm, space weaponry, like… uh, plasma cannons and shit. Some antipersonnel stuff, really nasty shit. Oh, sweeps for artillery, so, like, no call for fire if you’re around one.”

“Yawhol. Anything else, like, how many troops it carries? Shit like that?”

“Oh, about four, five hundred? Yeah, like, one of their companies. And one or two God Kings.”

“Right. Okay, how do you identify one?”

“If it looks like a skyscraper but it fuckin’ moves, it’s a fuckin’ Lamprey,” said Sergeant Brecker, laconically.

“Ek-fuckin’-zactly,” noted Duncan, neatly flipping the flash card into the trash. “If you are unable to identify a Lamprey, you desperately need your eyes examined. Next on our daily prescribed training of Posleen equipment identification, is this big mother-fucker,” he held up the flash card. “Bittan?”

“C-Dec, Command Dodecahedron. Core unit of a B-Dec or Battle Dodecahedron. Twelve-faceted cube. Random mix of interstellar weaponry on eleven facets. Antipersonnel secondaries. Interstellar drive. Umm, about 1600 personnel nominal, buncha God Kings, some light armor. Locks on twelve Lampreys to form a B-Dec which is the central fighting unit of the Posleen.”

“Very good. Excellent, even. How do you identify one?”

“It looks like a B-Dec, except smaller and the B-Decs have noticeable gaps between the attached Lampreys.”

“Close. The correct answer is: if you want to piss your shorts and run it’s either a B-Dec or a C-Dec and it don’t really matter much which.”

“How much longer we gotta put up with this shit?” asked Sergeant Brecker, rhetorically. The training schedule, by order of the battalion commander, had been read to each company during morning formation. Authorized ACS training, a total of thirty-five hours for this week alone, was currently “Identification of Known Posleen Vehicles and Equipment.” There were twenty-five items. The following week there was “Know Your Combat Suit,” an in-depth list of all the items on the suits. That, too, would have to be out of a book; there weren’t any suits to study.

Bittan fished the Lamprey flash card out of the trash. “I’d really like to keep this,” he said diffidently.

Duncan looked chagrined. “I’m sorry, man, I shouldn’t let my attitude fuck the rest of you up.”

“Don’ mean nothin’,” said Sergeant Brecker. “I mean, as bad as those fuckin’ grass drills were, at least we felt like we were learnin’ somethin’. It ain’t your fault battalion’s got it stuck so far up their fourth point of contact they couldn’t find light with a nuke.”

“F-U-C… K-E-D… ” Stewart began to intone.

“Attention on deck!” snapped a specialist halfway down the barracks.

“At ease, rest even,” called Captain Brandon. “Get the troops from next door and wake everybody up, I got newwws!”

“Whass happ’nin’ sir?” asked one of the mortar troops.

“Wait’ll we’re all here. I don’t want to have to go over this twice.” He grinned. “How are you liking the training?”

Feet shuffled for a moment, then the mortar specialist answered. “It fuckin’ sucks, sir.”

“Glad to hear that the first sergeant and I aren’t the only ones with that opinion.” The gathered troopers got a real chuckle from that.

Troops were trickling into both ends of the barracks. As the trickle fell off and the group pressed forward Captain Brandon hopped up and sat on one of the upper bunks. He looked around at the sea of black, white and brown faces to make sure that most of the troops were present.

“Okay, here’s the deal. We’ve been scheduled to lift day after tomorrow.” There was a muttered and confused chorus. “Yeah, is that good or bad? Well, we’ll be out of C-LOC, but we’ll be even more imprisoned. However, battalion has indicated that we might get access to our equipment once we’re on board ship. In the meantime I want you guys to bone up on all the ACS lore you can. We’re not going to get much work with the equipment before we’re engaged, so I want you guys to read the fuckin’ book! I understand that there’s only one per squad, so read aloud or share the reading. Read it in your spare time, read from it between deals! It’s the only damn card we’ve got to play! So study like you never did in school. Williams,” he pointed at a Second Platoon NCO, “maximum effective range of the M-403 suit grenade launcher?”

“Uh, a klick, sir?”

“Twelve hundred meters, close but no cigar, Sarn’t. If you don’t know it, I know your troops don’t. Duncan, maximum effective range of the M-300 grav rifle?”

“Maximum effective range of the targeting system, sir.”

“Explain.”

“The grav rifle has the ability to leave Earth’s orbit, sir. It will hit something as far away as you can aim.”

“Right. Private Bittan, what is a Lamprey and how do you identify it?”

Bittan glanced at Sergeant Brecker and got a nod. “Umm, it’s the lander portion of the B-Dec, the outer layer that surrounds the Command Dec. An’… if it looks like a skyscraper, but its flyin’, it’s a Lamprey, sir.”

Captain Brandon laughed. “Good answer, troop…”

“Complement of four hundred normals, nominal, with one to two God Kings. Single random anti-ship weapon on its vertical axis. Normal space lift and drives…”

“Thanks, Bittan, that’s the idea. You all need to get up to snuff on this stuff. Weapons, tactics, enemy equipment. Let’s hope we get to use the equipment once we’re on board, but in the meantime, study, study, study. We move to embarkation at 1030 hours day after tomorrow. That’s all.”

“Sir,” said Schrenker, “are we gonna get to call our families?”

“No.” Captain Brandon did not look happy to pass on that news. “We’ve been ordered locked down and that’s the way it’s gonna stay. Once we’re on board we’ll have the ability to send mail to our families, but not until we’re in space.”

There was a disgruntled mutter at that, but no more. “Yes, sir.”

“All right men, get back to it. And?”

“Study,” they chorused.

He waved and walked out as the company broke up into buzzing groups.