Armored Tears (14 page)

18.

Major
Aaron Feldman watched the bleak terrain of his world roll by under the
articulated tracks of his tank. His platoon of four tanks were cruising at a
steady 80 kph, the speed blowing the desert air into his face like a hot wind.
An acquired taste, the hot Arcadian wind on his face... but in his experience,
most tankers acquired it.

His
War-Hammer took most ground with a flowing smoothness, its four track-pods
pivoting to glide over the terrain. The low rumble of the tracks and the whine
of the motors somehow added to the feeling of surging, powerful speed.

The
long 41 megajoule gun thrust forward like a pointer, weaving and bobbing as it
kept itself aimed at the horizon in spite of the tanks flowing motion. Lots of
jokes about "big guns" was another thing tankers got used to.

He
had his visor down just enough to cover his eyes, which gave him a thin display
screen area superimposed with his vision. The tank-commander's sensors were
currently slaved to his helmet, so his casual scanning of the ground ahead was
being mirrored by a battery of sensitive thermal, optical and radio sensors.

His
sensors operator was down in the turret, monitoring a tank-deployed drone that
flew low a few kilometers ahead of the formation. His platoon's three other
tanks were in a staggered row, spread out across four kilometers of desert, and
each of their sensors operators had a drone out as well. If there was something
to spot out here, they had a very good chance of finding it.

The
rest of his crew, his gunner and his driver, had both elevated their seats so
that they sat head and shoulders out of the tank, unwilling to pass up the
chance to enjoy the feeling of the hot wind whipping by as the tank raced.
Feldman couldn't see it, but he was willing to bet that his driver, Corporal
Scott, was grinning behind his visor.

Reckless,
he thought. But that was the way the Armored Corps tended. The colonel, for
instance, he thought. The colonel had a bee in her bonnet. Which didn't mean
she was wrong. Lieutenant-colonel Tara "Legs" O'Connor had a superb,
honed sense of intuition, and it had served her well in her career. Sometimes —often—
she infuriated Feldman. Her nickname, for instance, and her shiny prosthetic
legs; it was just like her to embrace being maimed and to turn it into a
defiant joke.
Just
like her. But she
got the job done... whatever the job might be. And whatever the cost.

"Anything
from our drones?" he asked into his helmet comm. He was on the Platoon
push, so his three other tanks would hear him. Each tank had launched a drone
on a separate heading, allowing the platoon to cover more ground.

"Nothing
but sand," replied Sergeant Terence, in charge of the #2 tank.

"There's
rocks, too," added Corporal Velazquez, Feldman's tank's sensors operator,
via the intercom.

"Keep
scanning. If the colonel says something's out here, odds are it is,"
Feldman said, suppressing a bit of smile.

Hypocrite,
he thought to himself. He didn't buy into the colonel's myth, but here he was,
using it to motivate his people. Ah, well, the things an officer has to learn
to do.

For
a moment, he thought back to that mad, death-or-glory charge, seven years ago,
following then-Captain O'Connor on her company's famous death-ride. Tank after
tank dying, till the company was barely an over-strength platoon. But they had
succeeded. So many friends dead... burned to charred meat or blasted into
fragments of mangled gore. For glory, he thought, almost wanting spit at the
word. But we did win, he thought. We took the gate. And for that matter, Tara
O'Connor had never cared about glory either; that hadn't been her reason.

Feldman
shook his head. He had a job to do now, and it didn't include daydreams and old
memories.

"Sir,
something up ahead. Some sort of thermal pattern in the sand," the sensors
operator reported, sounding confused.

Thermal
patterns in the sand, Feldman thought, remembering the endless charge through
buried missile pods and concealed frame infantry.

"Sir,"
added the sensors operator, "I just lost the drone!"

"Driver,
stop!" he snapped. "Platoon! All tanks stop! Everyone, bring your
counter-missile and counter-mine systems on-line!"

All
the tanks had mine detection sensor suits at the bow, along with
counter-measures; a battery of tiny ground-penetrating rockets that could
penetrate down to a buried mine and either wreck it, or set it off safely ahead
of the tank. Faced with a mine-field, the tanks would form up in columns of
two, trading off as each lead tank expended its anti-mine rocket payload.

"OK,
people," Feldman said over the platoon comm push, "you know the
drill. Go slow, and let's tighten up."

If
there were hostiles ahead, a dispersed formation, useful for searching and
scanning, would be a bad idea.

"And
let's button up," Feldman added. "No sense in giving a sniper with a
smart-rifle a targ..."

Just
then, the pinging warning of the tank's laser detector sounded.

"Button
up!" Feldman shouted as he hit his drop lever. His seat dropped like a
stone, and the armored hatch slammed shut above him with a violent ringing
clang. He thought he might have heard the sound of a gunshot just before his
hatch slammed closed.

"All
units, prepare for..."

"Major,
they're shooting at us!" came a scared, unfamiliar voice from the platoon's
#2 tank. "Sergeant Terence has been hit! I think he's dead!"

"Who
is this?" Feldman said, trying to keep his own voice calm.

"Corporal
Wise, sir; gunner on #2."

"Alright,
Corporal, take over and run your tank. We'll get your tank commander to a medic
as soon as we can," Feldman replied.

"Platoon;
all tanks, make sure your defensive systems are up," Feldman added.
"And get on the sensors! Find that sniper!"

God
damn it, he cursed silently. Sergeant Terence was a veteran tank commander, but
his crew were all new recruits, just out of Armored Corps training. And if
there was a sniper out there, he could be tracking the tanks, setting them up
for...

The
sudden burst of missiles from the sand wasn't as much as surprise to Feldman as
a bitter realization of what was to come.

"Stand
by missile counter-measures" Feldman shouted, and prayed that the rest of
his people were down in their tanks, protected by armor.

Salvos
of little counter-missiles flashed from the tanks, drawing trails of smoke as
they arced over and tracked on the inbound anti-tank missiles. A shower of
explosions rattled over the desert as missiles and counter-missiles ripped
themselves apart.
 
       

"Driver,
reverse," Feldman ordered. A serious ambush would mean that there were
threats to his sides as well, and he needed to get out of this position, fast.

The
tank didn't move.

"Driver,
reverse! Hit it!" he shouted, but nothing happened.

"I
think Scott's been hit!" said the sensors operator.

More
missiles punched out of concealed launch pods in the sand ahead of the tanks.
More counter-missiles fired. The space ahead of the tanks was choked with more
explosions. A few enemy missiles got through, heading for the tanks. The entire
engagement hadn't lasted five seconds yet.

Outside,
the tank's compact Metal-Storm anti-missile turret whirred and roared; the
little turret had a cluster of stubby barrels, each loaded with multiple superimposed
rounds; each round was, in effect, an oversized shot shell. The system could
spray out fire at insane rates; literally a million rounds per minute; it
carried nothing like that much ammo, of course, but the rate of fire meant that
an inbound missile was met by an instantaneous "wall" of projectiles.

Missiles
exploded short of the tanks in flashes of fire-tinged dirty smoke and fragments
rang off of armor.

"Shit,"
cried Feldman, and engaged the driver override. Controlling a tank from inside
the turret was possible, but disorienting. Since the turret wasn't always
facing the direction of travel, you had to trust your displays and ignore you
sense of motion and balance. Some newer tank models had the driver inside the
turret in a counter-spinning crew station, but the Type-51 had nothing like
that, sticking to a conventional driver position in the hull.

Even
so, you could drive a tank from the commander's station, and Feldman did,
backing up as another salvo of missiles punched out of the ground, streaked
towards his tanks and died under a combination of counter-missiles and a flail
of Metal Storm projectiles.

"Find
me a target!" Feldman shouted.

"I've
got nothing!" shouted the sensors operator. "Just buried missile
pods. Wait, there's a framer out there, in some rocks; two kilometers."

"Engage
with auto-smartguns," ordered Feldman.

"Engaging,"
said the gunner.

Two
of the four auto-smartguns mounted on the turret top twitched onto their target
and opened fire. From inside the tank, the sound of their hammering bursts was
a barely a muffled popping sound.

Dust
and pulverized stone rose up from the distant rocks where the sensors operator
had spotted the target.

"Inbound
missiles," reported the sensors operator, as a salvo of missiles rose out
of the desert. This wasn't a missile-pod, though, Feldman thought. The salvo
was dispersed and coming in from longer range; dug-in frame infantry, hidden
behind the distant rocks so that their signatures wouldn't stand out before
they fired.

"Platoon,"
Feldman ordered, "all units reverse. Pull back. I think we've run into a
prepared defensive line."

Outside,
another salvo of counter-missiles raced out and detonated amid the inbound
missiles. A few seconds later another burst of Metal-Storm fire finished off a
single missile that had managed to get close.
   

Off
to the right, the platoon's #4 tank wasn't as lucky. Two missiles got through
the counter-missiles, and as the Meta-Storm turret wiped one out in a hail of
projectiles, the other dove and detonated against the bow of the tank.

"No
penetration," came the report from Sergeant Tanaka, "but I've lost my
left bow track! It's jammed. I need to clear it or I can't move!"

"Shit,"
Feldman cursed to himself. Then, on the comm push, "Can you clear
it?"

"I
think we'd need to dismount to get at it!" Tanaka replied.

"Platoon!
All unit, lay down smoke and covering fire for #4 tank! Tanaka, get that track
cleared, ASAP!"

"Roger,
sir. We're on it!"

All
four tanks volleyed smoke grenade launchers and then erupted in a crackle of
automatic fire, each tank opening up with all four of its 10.5mm
auto-smartguns. There were no clear targets, but precise bursts of fire swept
across every likely position where an enemy could be.

A
few minutes passed as Feldman watched the auto-smartgun ammo counters run down.
The tanks were firing precise bursts, tracking from possible target to possible
target, but even so, ammo was down almost by 50%.

More
enemy missiles probed into the smoke, but their targeting was off, and only one
tank had to fire a salvo of counter-missiles.

"Track's
clear!" came Sergeant Tanaka's voice. "But my sensors operator is
hit! We've got him inside, though! We can roll! But with one track gone we're
going to be slow!"

"It'll
fucking have to do!" shouted Feldman. "Platoon! All units pull the
fuck back!"

19.

General
Alan Stirling looked at the display again and frowned. As the commanding officer
of the entire active portion of the Arcadian Defense Force, he was used to
things going wrong, but more often in a bureaucratic manner. A pissing match
between two or more of the Corps that made up the Defense Force was more common
than suddenly losing contact with two of the Aerospace Corps aircraft and the
entire satellite network.

Today's
problem looked like it was something altogether more serious. Stirling could
see himself reflected in the polished display surface of the briefing table. A
stern, gray-haired visage met his gaze with tired eyes. In his mind's eye,
Stirling could still see himself as a young man, his tightly curled hair black,
his mahogany face unwrinkled, his eyes eager.

Alan
Stirling had been born on Earth, in the west-African nation of Ghana, but he'd
been a child when his family had made its way to Arcadia in the late 2040s,
driven by increasing hostility to their Kassena heritage by Ghana's majority
Ashanti population. His parents had never forgotten where they came from, but Alan
had grown up proudly Arcadian.

He'd
joined the Arcadian Defense Force as a young man, at its inception, in 2058.
Founded to respond to raids and attacks from the refugee bandit-lords, back
then the Defense Force had been nothing but poorly armed irregulars; hunting
guns and garage micro-factory copies of ancient 20th century military rifles
had been all they could get.

The
fighting had been bitter in those days, the bandits often outgunning the
Defense Force soldiers. Everyone had known that the UEN was surreptitiously
equipping the bandits, but back then, nothing could be done about it. And
meanwhile, the UEN Peace Force had always been close by, ready to swoop in to
disarm and arrest the "violent Arcadian radicals" who dared to resist
the refugee bandits' raids.

But
the nascent Arcadian government had foreseen the need for something more, and
it had secretly been buying weapons. There had been no shortage of would-be
sellers; though the UEN claimed to administer all of the nations of Earth, many
of its member states had their own agendas. The Pacific Alliance, was one of
these; a cooperative block made up of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia,
Singapore and Malaysia, had been perfectly happy to sell weapons to Arcadia in
exchange for access to cutting-edge biotech research work of a sort that was
politically impossible to carry out on Earth. Bit by bit, advanced weapons were
smuggled in and assembled, and bit by bit a modern, professional military
Defense Force was formed and trained.

It
had all come to a head at the battle of Hope Springs, in 2061. Stirling had
found himself a newly minted lieutenant, in charge of one of the newly equipped
platoons of frame infantry when the Defense Force had faced a massive raid from
an alliance of "refugee" gangster warlords. The gangsters, more than
a thousand strong, had certainly had the numerical advantage. But for once, the
firepower advantage had been decisively with the Arcadians. Frame infantry,
re-purposed, ex-utility "combat" aircraft, and even a pair of newly
assembled tanks, smuggled through the gate as parts, had turned the bandits'
attempt at overwhelming force into a bloody rout. Never again would the bandit
lords willingly face Defense Force troops.

Of
course the UEN had been aghast, though Stirling suspected they had been more
upset to realize that their Peace Force detachment was no longer the strongest
military force on the planet than they were about the fate of the bandit lords.

The
UEN had tried to impose an embargo of all military goods through the gate to
Arcadia, but they had quickly found that the embargo was almost impossible to
enforce. Corruption of officials in the Federal States of North America —the
FSNA— on the Earth side of the gate, along with clever use of
"dual-purpose" goods, allowed the Arcadian Defense Force to keep
increasing its combat power.

It
had been in response to the rampant corruption and smuggling though the gate
that the UEN had moved the gate generation equipment from Earth to Arcadia,
where it would be operated solely under UEN control. And at the same time, they
had also begun a massive increase in the rate of refugee relocation to Arcadia,
intending to flood the planet with a population totally dependent on the UEN.

By
2069, it had been clear that Arcadia could not survive as an independent nation
so long as the UEN controlled the gate. The UEN had been sure that there was
nothing the Arcadians could do about it, but in 2070, the Arcadian Defense
Force had done something about it even so. Colonel Stirling had led the frame
infantry assault on the main UEN Peace Force fortified barracks, pinning their
troops down while other Defense Force units had assaulted the gate dome. And
taken it. It had been an impossible, heady victory, though one that had come at
high cost.

Since
then, the Defense Force's problems had been... less dramatic.

But
now that it seemed that some drama had come again, General Stirling could not
say he was happy to see it.

"I
think we have to consider the possibility of an info-warfare attack," General
Stirling said, looking over the faces of his assembled liaison officers from
the various Defense Force Corps.
         

"Sir,"
replied the Aerospace Corps liaison officer, Colonel Danielle Farber, "we
did get a transmission from one of the 'ghosts.' I think we should..."

"I
saw that, Colonel. I already saw it," Stirling replied, meeting the
Aerospace Corps officer's eyes; she looked improbably young to him, a notably
attractive woman... but her eyes were intense and focused enough to remind
Stirling that she had flown a combat-reconnaissance-plane, a "ghost,"
in combat against UEN forces in the 2070 war. None the less, he thought she was
being too quick to jump to too wild a conclusion this time.

"But
I think," he said, "that a simultaneous loss of contact seems a lot
more likely to be some virus in our central communications system than a sudden
attack from space. Who'd be attacking us from space, Colonel? Aliens?"

"UEN,
sir," Colonel Farber.

"How
would..." General Stirling began to reply.

"Sir!"
came an interrupting shout from one of his aides, and the sound of running
feet. "Sir! Reports of a UEN infiltration force coming through the gate!
There's fighting at the gate facility!"

"My
god..." breathed Stirling, feeling a coldness in his gut that he hadn't
felt since he'd faced UEN Peace Force framers in desperate, close combat amid
the thick, black, billowing smoke of the burning buildings of their fortified
barracks.

Then
realization struck.

"Cut
the power to the gate! Shut it down! Now!" he shouted.

"Sat-comm
contact with the gate power and control facility hasn't been re-estab..."
started one of the communication staffers.

"Never
mind the sat-comm system!" Stirling shouted. "Broadcast the order in
the clear! Use the fucking phone! Confirm the shutdown!"
         

"Yes,
sir!"

"And
send out the alert! All reserves are to head to their emergency mobilization
points. All active units to go to full alert! I'll inform the government."

"What
is it? What's happening?" one of the junior staff officers said to another
young officer next to her, but Stirling overheard and turned to her.

"What
it is? It's war."