A Hymn Before Battle

26 Andata Province, Diess IV 2059 GMT May 18th, 2002 ad

Lieutenant O’Neal stripped the box magazine from his M-200 grav rifle and stared unseeing at the thousands of teardrop-shaped pellets within. Then he reinserted the magazine and did the same with his grav pistol.

“Would you please quit doing that?” asked Lieutenant Eamons. Both of them waited by windows on the northwest corner of Qualtren. The angle was even greater than the FSO indicated and they had a clear view of the 1.145 miles to the next intersection. There the Naltrev megascraper cut back and blocked the view. Naltrev and its sister megascraper Naltren held the battalion scout platoon and the upper part of O’Neal’s vision systems were slaved to the view from the scout platoon leader’s.

“Where are your people, Tom?” Mike asked.

“Downstairs.”

“Are they tasked?” O’Neal continued to watch the view from the scout leader. It was unsettling because of the flicker of a personal area force-screen — the PAF set up in the anticipated direction of attack — and because Lieutenant Smith had a nasty tendency to occasionally toss his head like a horse throwing a fly. The movement would swing the viewpoint right and up. I doubt he even notices that he’s doing it, thought Mike, stripping out the magazine and reinserting it, but I wish he’d quit.

“Would you please quit doing that, Mike! And why do you want to know? No, they’re sitting around with their thumbs up their butts.”

“Quit what?” Mike asked, his attention focused like a medical laser on the view from his helmet. “Start having them emplace cratering charges across Anosimo and Sisalav at the Sal Line and then start placing C-9 charges at the locations I’ll slave to their AIDs.”

“Whoa, Mike. You’re a nice guy and outrank me by a whole grade, but the hell if I’ll piss my career away for you. The colonel will have my bar if I do that.” The lieutenant tried to shake his head and stopped when he had to force it against the biotic gel filling the helmet.

The Jell-O-like material completely filled the helmet and the interior of the suit. It was responsible for more than a third of the cost of the armor and the only major part that was not, at bottom, O’Neal’s concept.

Putting on the helmet of a combat suit was something like putting your head in a bucket full of jam. However, the material completely cushioned the wearer against the most extreme shocks and had a series of other important functions. It read the user’s movement intentions through their own neural net and drove the suit accordingly. It recycled waste into potable water, edible food and breathable air. And it had enough medical technology and ability to keep its “ProtoPlasmic Intelligence System” alive as long as they did not take a direct hit to the heart, brain or upper spine.

All that did not make troopers any happier about donning the helmet. One third of all washouts in the first month of training were from troops who could not handle first putting on the helmet, then holding their breath as the underlayer humped and rippled creating pockets for breathing and vision. The wait until the suit was in position could feel like an eternity.

The underlayer also acted as an ersatz sensory deprivation device, another negative that led to occasional mishaps. The weapons and equipment of the units had to be specially modified all around. With no feedback from contacts, the suits had a tendency to destroy anything they touched.

Since there was no way to actually see through the underlayer, the helmet was totally opaque. What the user saw was a high-quality representation cast by tiny laser diodes that threaded out of the helmet wall. Instead of turning his head, when a trooper made a movement to look from side to side the viewpoint shifted. It was somewhat like controlling a point of view with a joystick. Again, it took getting used to. There was no feeling of motion, so it could induce motion sickness, and a trooper could suddenly find himself looking backwards by overdriving the viewpoint controls. Similar leads tapped the mastoid bone for sound conduction.

For comfort, the suit would let the users move their heads side to side, but only slowly. However, since the diodes could do all sorts of neat tricks with vision, the peripheral vision was actually superior to normal and far and near sighting were enhanced. That was before any special requests like “heads up” displays, weaponry displays, distant viewing, split screen viewing or sixty-seven other abilities.

“Lieutenant Colonel Youngman is currently busy and he won’t notice unless we detonate them. When we detonate them, you will be a hero for taking the initiative because it will be the only thing that saves the right flank of the Corp from being rolled up.”

“Is it that bad?” asked the engineer, wondering how much his friend’s moroseness was justified. Although he would have preferred to lay out a full reception for the Posleen, the firepower of the battalion was massive.

“Tom, we’re about to be corncobbed and there ain’t a fuckin’ thing I can do about it. After this day the name Youngman will be right up there with Custer, except George Armstrong had a brilliant career before he pissed it away. Now get rigging the charges. Make the cratering charges big ones. I want them to tear the faces right off the megascrapers; they’ve got forty minutes max.”

“Fuck it,” said the officer with an attempted shrug. “You’re right, nobody will notice unless we have to blow ’em. You want both Boulevards mined? What about 7^th Cav?”

“Yeah, if Cav falls back they’ll want the cover,” he paused. “There’s the gust front.”

“Huh?” asked the lieutenant, looking out the window toward where the enemy could be expected to appear.

“A bunch, a real shit pot full of Indowy are headed this way,” said Mike, slaved to the distant view of the scout leader. “Get your guys to work, Tom. Now!”

Lieutenant Eamons gave his friend an unseen nod of farewell and casually blasted a hole in the wall with his M-200. Stepping into thin air, his command suit floated him, gentle as a feather, the ten stories to ground level. With the fusion bottles of the megascrapers to draw on there was no lack of energy and it was the quickest and most fun way down. Because it was “untactical” it was forbidden by the battalion but the unit was going to open up the minute they saw the Posleen, so what was one more hole? It made as much sense as not having his people prepare hard defenses because they would “reveal the MLR.” Like the whole battalion opening up on them wouldn’t reveal the MLR to the Posleen? Mike was right, they were going to get corncobbed.

Tom looked around as he drifted down, again marveling at the mixture of alien and familiar. Take New York City, please! Simplify the glass facades. Choose one style, similar to the twin towers. Make it .914 miles high and 1.145 miles square. The deep, dim canyons were similar to those found in any major Terran city, but deeper, darker. As he grounded he was reminded of the other differences. The gravity was slightly lower and the sunlight had a greenish tinge like fluorescent lighting. It was also brighter, bright as an acetylene torch when it shone on the hard packed clay that replaced asphalt; the grav drives needed no special surface for support. And no plants, not even a blade of grass or the green of a window box. He entered a cavernous portal in the ground floor, one of several for vehicle entry and exit, and began bounding down the long, echoing corridor. “AID, give me a route to my platoon’s assembly area and connect me to the platoon sergeant.” It was time to do some work.

Mike continued to watch the thickening spray of Indowy refugees on Sisalav Boulevard. Cutting the view to one quarter of his visor, he saw them in real-time entering the battalion’s sector. He heard “Hold fire” calls on the company nets he was monitoring and smiled; the little Indowy could hardly have looked less like the enemy. The hairy little bipeds were on foot, covered in a layer of yellowish dust from the roads and fleeing unencumbered. They seemed not to have the human urge to maintain possessions.

“AID, where’s their transportation?” asked Mike, puzzled. There were none of the cars, trucks or even manhandled carts that would be expected with a similar group of humans.

“They have no need for it, so virtually no Indowy have transports. Few of them leave the megascrapers in their entire lives; indeed, few leave a single area, a floor or a sector. A few never leave a series of rooms. All they need is in the building, their quarters, food workshops and baths.”

“Where are they going? Do they know?”

“No, there is no support for refugees. If they are nonproductive they are of no consequence. Some will find menial positions, a few with special skills may find employment, but the vast majority will eventually die of exposure or starvation.”

Mike shivered in his plastic womb; the more he learned about Galactic ethos, the less he liked.

“Show me a schematic of primary water and sewer pipes connecting to Qualtren and Qualtrev with diameter and access notations.” It bothered him that the plan was so one dimensional. A few of the upper stories were being used but the vast subbasements and sewers were being ignored. In WWII the Russians and Germans both used sewers to good effect. At least the entire Posleen mass would not be able to fire at them if they were underground. He studied the schematic and frowned in puzzlement.

“Michelle, those supply systems — I don’t care how minimalist the Indowy are, there are not enough and large enough water supply lines or sewage disposal lines. What gives?”

“Most water and sewage are recycled in the megascraper.”

“Hmm.” The water pipes were still big enough to move around in. “Michelle, instruct all AIDs to begin a plot for every individual and small unit to the nearest water pipe access. Prepare a retreat plan to Saltrev/Saltren via underground connections and update a defense plan. Continuously update Kobe and Jericho on the basis of engineering platoon advancements. Prepare to coordinate demolition plan with Alpha and Bravo companies. And we’ll have to find a way to shut down the flow.” Expect victory, plan for defeat.

The flood of Indowy was starting to choke the boulevard, their gray-green bodies pressed together, packing the wide road from side to side. He could see more flooding out of Waltren from the point of view of the scout platoon leader, those tributaries adding to the flood. The street was as packed as Wall Street at lunch time, as packed as a papal mass with the lemminglike flood of Indowy. Their sturdy little bodies were being smashed against the unyielding metal faces of the buildings, crushing the young, old and weak alike underfoot. Lesser streams wound into and through Naltren and Naltrev, across the avenue and into Qualtrev/Qualtren, every individual contributing to both the pressure and the panic.

As the major force of Indowy refugees reached Qualtren/Qualtrev, the back pressure and the turn combined to drive thousands of the small humanoids into the northwest quadrant of Qualtren’s lower floors. There they encountered 1^st platoon of Charlie company and the effect was shattering.

Individually the Indowy had the manners and aggressiveness of a rabbit but in that vast panicked horde they acted like stampeding buffalo. When the wave front hit 1^st platoon the Indowy entering the many ground floor openings at first went around the armored humans arrayed within. Then, as the pressure mounted, they started jostling the soldiers and climbing on and over them. As the weight mounted of first a handful, then a dozen then hundreds of panicked extraterrestrials, the suited troopers were toppled and began to thrash under the stampede. As they thrashed and kicked, trying to clear them away, the servo-assisted armor smashed and splattered the inoffensive little creatures painting their green ichor across the pastel walls. The ichor only added to the problem, making the floor slippery with body fluids.

The Charlie company commander and first sergeant rushed to the scene in a futile attempt to regain the platoon position but they, in turn, were swept under by the flood. Two of the battalion’s terawatt lasers were in the mass, set to fire “right into the throats” of the Posleen, and they were lost as well. Thus, before the battle was joined, the crucial platoon and company commander of the battalion’s defense along with thirty percent of its heavy firepower was neutralized. All without one Posleen in sight.

Mike switched onto the Charlie net as it became jammed with screaming and cursing. He attempted to contact the Charlie Company CO, Captain Vero, since the platoon’s AIDs could be instructed to filter outgoing transmissions but the commander was stepping all over the net by shouting and cursing as loudly as his troopers. When Mike switched to the battalion command net, the RTO was overwhelmed with calls from Alpha, Weapons, Support and even Headquarters’ company commanders requesting orders or guidance. Alpha’s ground floor platoon, Third Herd was in danger of being overwhelmed as well. Mike heard Captain Wright request permission to move them to upper floors and be immediately denied by the RTO; it was obvious that he had not consulted Lieutenant Colonel Youngman.

Lieutenant Colonel Youngman and Major Norton were, meanwhile, conferring on the staff net. Major Norton’s AID had been ordered to hold all incoming calls. This was a technique that worked with RTOs but only worked with the very literal AIDs after they had been “broken in.” With an RTO, if he thought the call was really important, he’d pass it on. That was how you knew you had a good RTO. But an inexperienced AID was like a bad RTO. It took every order literally and had no sense of discretion. Until Major Norton countermanded the setting, if in the heat of battle he remembered, the company commanders could not contact their remaining link to the battalion commander when they were blocked by his RTO.

Captain Wright withdrew 3^rd platoon without orders and placed them ready to resume their positions. Captain Vero finally calmed down and started to get those of his troops that he could withdrawn. About half of the Charlie platoon and most of Alpha had been withdrawn when the first Posleen Report came in. However, the lasers were left behind. The colonel and the S-3 were not even aware of the situation; they were totally cut off from communication outside their little world.

“Enemy in view” came the call on all command nets, the priority stepping on all other communications. Instantly every commander switched to feeds from the scouts.

Behind the flood of Indowy, like a hawk eating a snake, was an equally solid if more disciplined flood of leprous yellow centaurs. The front rank was trotting to keep up with the running Indowy, wielding their long palmate blades in either hand. They would hack down an Indowy and run to catch the next as the following rank lifted the body and passed it to the outside. Along the way the corpse would be gutted and dismembered until the rendered portions were stacked neatly against a wall. The force was a gigantic moving abattoir with the occasional snack nibbled along the way.

Behind this first block of about twelve thousand Posleen the remainder were broken into three streams. The center stream continued to follow the front group as backup, while the outside streams poured into the megascrapers.

The leaders, the God Kings, were clearly evident. They rode in their open saucer-shaped vehicles about two meters across with lasers or HVM launchers mounted on powered gimbals. According to orders the scout/snipers, one member of each three-man scout team, lifted their M-209 sniper rifles and, as a group, fired a low-velocity sniper round at a designated God King. Like a single string-cut marionette, ten God Kings fell. The whole mass checked for a split second and then responded.

The low-velocity rounds of the snipers left no more signature than a high-velocity rifle bullet; there should have been nothing to betray the position of the scouts. But previously unsuspected targeting systems automatically swiveled the vehicle-mounted weapons of the remaining God Kings and, as they locked on target, a storm of lasers and hypervelocity missiles swept back up range. In addition the subjects of the deceased reacted with hyperaggression, flailing the target points designated by the leader’s fire with a sleet of needle and rocket fire. In a series of eye-blinking detonations and searing laser strikes the locations of the scout teams were swept away in the storm of fire. Huge holes were blasted deep into the building under the concentrated fire of twenty vehicle-mounted weapons and twelve thousand hand weapons, and if the force-screens had any positive effect it was unappreciable. The scout platoon disappeared in an unnoticeable haze of blood.

There was a sound of retching on the staff circuit and Captain Vero was muttering “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” over and over on the command net. Other than that the nets were silent for a moment as the Posleen swept on unchecked. Their coordination suffered however; fewer of the Indowy bodies made it to the side and some of the front forces began trickling away into the buildings.

“Well,” said Lieutenant Colonel Youngman on the staff net, stepping on whoever was retching, “I stand corrected. The threat analysis was understated. Major Norton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get over to Saltren/Saltrev. Begin preparing fallback positions. I suspect we are not going to be in these positions for long. Ah, Lieutenant Eamons?” Unnoticed by the battalion commander, his AID switched him to the proper frequency.

“Yes, sir? Lieutenant Colonel Youngman?” the lieutenant was panting.

“Yes. I need you to set up cratering charges on Sisalav immediately.”

“I already did, sir and we’re mining the buildings now,” said the engineer officer in a sharp tone.

“Good initiative. It may save our butts. After that pull back to Saltren and start putting in all the concertina and mines you can lay your hands on.”

“Yes, sir.” Thank god he didn’t ask what kinds of mines. Like O’Neal thinks I can’t read a demolition program.

“Captain Brandon.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Youngman?” asked the company commander with a note of surprise.

“Yes. Prepare to cover the battalion’s withdrawal to Saltren and Saltrev. I intend to take the Posleen in a running ambush. Your unit is to dispose itself along the boulevard on both buildings and slow their advance. Then extract through the buildings and cross the avenues away from Sisalav.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, with all due respect, where the hell have you been? And where is Major Norton?”

“We’re both at the Forward TOC. Or we were, Major Norton is headed to Saltren to prepare the secondary positions.”

“Do you know that 1^st of Charlie and Alpha 3^rd were both overrun by the Indowy?” asked the company commander. The tone was one of fatigue and near despair.

“What?” asked the startled battalion commander.

“We haven’t been able to reach you for the last fifteen minutes. There is no one on the ground floors and we’ve lost three lasers so far. We are totally open on the ground on Qualtren.”

“Hold one.” The colonel left the net for a moment. “My RTO says he couldn’t get through to me either because he kept getting stepped on by Major Norton and myself.” The officer cursed quietly for a moment. “I hate these fucking suits,” he ended.

“Too late, sir. You need to contact Vero and Wright, ASAP. They’ve got some serious problems.”

“Too right. Uh, suit, connect me with all the company commanders. Are we live? Alpha Six, Charlie Six, Bravo Six. Stand by to engage the enemy. The building is being mined by the engineering platoon, you are authorized to provide assets as available. If necessary and on my command we will begin a fighting retreat to the same relative positions on the Sal Line. Bravo is to cover the retreat. Attempt to retake the heavy weapons positions as assets are available. There’s no time for questions just hit ’em low and hit ’em hard, that’s what we’re here for, Falcon Six, out.”

“Tom, this is Mike.”

“Yeah, Mike.”

Lieutenant O’Neal was four stories lower and deep in the structure. He was mainly using support corridors; they were higher and wider and that way he avoided the majority of the fleeing Indowy. There were still hundreds of them underfoot blocking the intersections and group areas. All of them were trying to leave simultaneously having ignored orders to do it before and hampering the combat operations. Mike stopped, temporarily stymied by a blocked stairwell and stared speculatively at a large tank of liquid connected to a fractional distiller.

“How’s it coming?” he asked.

“We’ve finished the roads and the building is about twenty-five percent done. The colonel authorized the mining,” finished the officer. There was a hint of smugness in his voice.

Mike had missed that call in his monitoring; he was surprised at the announcement. “He authorized Jericho?”

“Well, I told him we were mining the building.”

“But not how?”

“He said use your initiative.”

Mike laughed at the irony. “That’s a first. Okay, we might be covered.” He was to regret the choice of words.

Mike’s experienced and helpful AID, Michelle, flashed a complex schematic of the engineering platoon’s progress in a virtual hologram floating at eye height. The completed areas were in green, the areas that should be completed by the time the Posleen arrived were in yellow and the areas that would not be completed were in red. Mike touched an area near Charlie in Qualtren.

“Concentrate over here, if you please, kind sir.”

“Why certainly, bon homme, and with that I bid you au revoir.”

“Roger, out.”

Mike took one more look at the schematic and flicked it off with a gesture. With the colonel now on board his “go-to-hell-plan,” even if the battle went straight to hell, the battalion’s sector would still be secured. “Good luck, Tom.”

“Captain Brandon,” Mike said, triggering a burst into a structural member on the second floor of Qualtren.

“Lieutenant O’Neal?”

“Yes, sir. I suspect we’ll start the fallback shortly after contact. I would like your assistance in an expansion of the commander’s plan. All your guys have to do is fall back on the routes I download to them and destroy a few structures on their way out.”

When he reached the ground floor he headed for an ammunition cache. As he scooted he was studying the schematic as the engineers frantically laid charges and larger and larger areas turned green.

“What’s the plan?”

“It’s called Jericho, sir.” Mike took a few moments to explain.

“That’s a hell of an expansion, lieutenant. It’ll give us a breather, but…”

“Sir, it’ll give us more than a breather, it’ll secure this whole sector. Then we can move into support of 7^th Cav.” When he reached the ammo dump he started loading a grav sled with an M-323 machine gun and ammunition boxes. “Frankly it is what we should have done instead of sending out the mobile forces to get wiped out.”

“Mike, this isn’t one of your computer games. Just keeping the company from bolting will be hard enough.”

“Sir, when we fall back the personnel will lose their sense of direction. I’ve been lost in a unit before; you’d take directions from the devil himself. This extracts them without exposing them to fire and secures the sector. What more could anyone ask?”

“Uh, limiting collateral damage?” asked the commander rhetorically. “Okay, okay, we’ll do it. Make sure the information is available immediately when we fall back.”

“The company’s AIDs already have the plan. All it took was your okay.”

“Good luck, Lieutenant.”

“Vaya con Dios, Captain, go with God.” He paused for a moment to let the channel clear. “Michelle, get me Captain Wright.” Then picked up a loaded grav sled and headed back up the ramp, watching the schematic as he went.