Strong Arm Tactics (12 page)

“God, this is awful,” he said.

“You should try it without armor, sir,” Mose said. “The pump head’s worse. That’s the actual interface.”

“Sixteen combatants, sir,” Borden interjected, after a moment’s calculation. “All dead or too wounded to follow us. If the exercise is truly one-on-one, then there are only seven left.”

“Squad leaders, report,” Daivid said, trying to ignore the fumes. It seemed as though the smell had a cumulative effect. He thought he should be getting used to it as he went, but it seemed to get worse. Deprived substantially of one sense, sight, under the terms set by the exercise, it felt as though his other senses had become heightened. Now was not the time he would have welcomed enhanced senses.

“Two casualties,” Lin stated. “Doc and Spidey. No wounded. These guys couldn’t hit a starship from the inside.”

“Taz is a casualty,” Boland announced, lighting up Streb’s and Vacarole’s stats in Wolfe’s helmet display, followed by Nuu Myi’s and Haalten’s. “Mustache, too. I’m wounded. So are Pearl and Mantis.”

“Romeo’s out,” D-45 added, illuminating Injaru’s icon. “Three wounded, all walking.”

“Good. Let’s get this over with. The hour’s almost up.”

O O O

Instead of hampering his thinking, the hammering of the sewage pumps created a deafening white noise that was surprisingly easy to ignore. If Daivid was designing an exercise like this one, and he had, the squad that was left to defend the objective would be the best troopers he had available, and they would have the most ordnance. They knew the Cockroaches were coming, they were holed up in a small, defensible location, and all they had to do was wait out the time limit. Twelve minutes to go. Daivid didn’t have to announce that to the platoon; all of them had chronos in their visor displays.

Lin’s voice came through his headset. “We’re in the room, sir, seven o’clock off your flank.” Daivid noticed the cluster of faint red smears behind the heat signatures of the engines.

“Thanks, chief. You’re familiar with the terrain. Any suggestions? Anybody?”

“They’re going to sit tight,” Boland opined. “That room’s about three meters on a side, very cosy. I doubt we can get them to chase us. I vote for flashbangs and a hard push when their eyes are dazzled.”

“Anyone got anything they like better?” Daivid asked. “No? Good. Are percussion grenades likely to rupture the sump?”

“Doubt it, sir,” Lin said. “It’s made to withstand over 6000 kpc.”

Six thousand kilos per centimeter. “Right. Grenadiers, load ’em. Sharpshooters, give them cover. Ammo, I want your squad to be in charge of retrieval. You’re pretty sure the item is in this sump?”

“It’s what I would do, sir,” the senior chief replied.

“Right. We’ll have to assume they’d play the same.”

“Okay,” Lin announced to her squad. “I want a volunteer to be dirty bird.”

“Aw, chief!” “Peee-yeeew!” “Uh, I just cleaned my armor.”

“I’ll do it,” Jones said amiably. “I’ve smelled worse.”

“Thanks, Songbird. You’re elected.”

“Troopers ready?” Daivid asked. “Open ’er up!”

Ewanowski and Ambering leaped forward to spin the big wheel. The semicat grunted, and the human groaned with the effort.

“Can’t move it, sir,” Ambering said.

Borden consulted the circuitry behind a panel on the left of the door. “They’ve got the bolts locked and the electronics jammed.”

Daivid turned to his ensign. “Tinker, you speak machine. Can you get it open the easy way, or do we have to blast it?”

He could almost hear the grin. “Sir, I can get that door to understand me. If they haven’t changed the emergency codes since last night.”

Daivid stopped himself asking why the ensign would have wanted to break into the sump the night before, and decided it would take longer than the now eleven minutes they had left. “Then start cracking! Everyone, hold ready until you see the whites … uh …”

“The red of their heat signatures,” Borden supplied, helpfully.

“Uh, yeah. Hit it!”

There was no way to disguise what they were attempting to do. On the other side of the door, Wolfe picked up the faintest pink traces of body heat as the defenders mustered. One of them had leaped forward and was mirroring Thielind’s actions, trying to prevent him from engaging the battery-powered emergency system that would unlock a jammed hatch.

“Got it!” the scrawny ensign crowed, leaping backwards into the ranks of the sharpshooters as the hatch sprang free.

“Go, go, go!”

Ewanowski grabbed the edge of the hatch and swung it open with himself behind it, as Parviz and Okumede heaved flash and percussion grenades into the room. They ‘exploded,’ filling the room with blinding light. Their visors automatically darkened against the blaze, the Cockroaches charged in, firing.

The wave of stink that greeted Wolfe clawed at his nose and throat with sharp fingers, almost halting him in his tracks. He swallowed his gorge with difficulty. Though his web suit kept him at a constant comfortable level, the ambient temperature was almost twenty degrees Centigrade higher than outside the room.

“We should have left them in here until one minute to,” he gasped. “They’d have been begging to have us shoot them.”

Red lights flashed towards him. He rolled out of the way behind the doors, firing as he went. The defenders must have been expecting flash grenades, because they did not seem to have hesitated a moment before responding. Their shapes, dark pink like rare meat, hunched along the walls, shooting round after hot red round at the invaders. The charging Boland let out a yell, then tumbled to the ground as his suit went yellow. His troopers dodged, using the falling body as cover, to press further into the room. Wolfe, Borden and Thielind came in behind, shooting as targets presented themselves. Lin’s heavy-weapon squad pushed in behind, then kept going with the rest of the platoon covering them.

“Get the target!” Wolfe shouted.

The defenders were well dug-in. Their pink silhouettes faded behind obstructions invisible in the dark. His visor provided him with a rough topography, but he and the rest of X-Ray wasted a lot of rounds on metal cabinets, ceramic-lined objects, and pieces of portable equipment on wheels and gurneys.

Almost as soon as he had thought it, his sensors warned him of an inanimate object rushing towards him. He threw out his arms to fend it off, and was hit below waist level by a rolling metal table of some kind. It served to distract him for just the moment needed by one of the defenders to leap out of cover and make directly for him, sidearm blazing away.

Without stopping to wonder if the trooper knew he was the CO, and how he could identify him without ident tags, Wolfe ducked behind the convenient rolling table and fired back. Tags floating over red forms in the center of the room showed Lin’s squad covering Jones as he belly-crawled toward the fountaining heat source there. He felt a ‘click’ that indicated the current magazine in his pistol was spent. The figure was almost upon him. With a twinge, he cast the gun out of reach and drew his sword.

Quick as lightning, his opponent whisked his own saber out of the sheath with the opposite hand, continuing to bracket Wolfe with red flashes until he was close enough to sweep the blade over and around. Damn, this trooper was fast! Wolfe had just enough time to raise his own guard to keep the other’s weapon from slamming into the side of his neck. He sprang to his feet, using the momentum to parry and riposte, cutting at the other’s neck and shoulder joints. His opponent was several centimeters taller than he. The table still lay between them. Wolfe felt it push to the right, as the other tried to get it out of the way. Just as tenaciously, he hung onto it and kept it in place. Anything that prevented the other from closing that distance was good.

Around him, shots bombarded X-Ray’s troopers as they attempted to enter the chamber. Daivid counted three more fall to keen marksmanship that would have been superior anywhere, though there were few awards given for knocking off a target at three meters. He also counted far more than seven bodies without tags in the room. His onboard computer found fifteen.

“Axe, do you see a discrepancy between what we were told and what you can observe around you?”

“Aye, sir,” the voice of his XO sounded cool even though he could see her engaged in a close-range sword fight with a bruiser who would have outweighed her two to one without the armor. She brought her blade down and around in a nasty riposte that slashed into the trooper’s knee joint and up again into his groin. The blue aura turned sickly green. “We are outnumbered. That is far more likely in a real-world scenario.”

“But not one we’re supposed to have to face on our first surprise assault in the middle of the night.”

“Captain Harawe has a reputation for testing the mettle of those under his command, sir.”

“Bugger Harawe,” Daivid said, leaping backwards as the heavy blade of his opponent slashed downward. He felt it nick the surface of his armor. He slashed back, but the other was a much better sword fighter. He was parried almost at every turn. Gradually, he was beaten back to the edge of the room, not a long trip, and held there as a barrier against any more Cockroaches getting in.

The others figured out the ploy, and fired around Daivid at the big trooper, who ducked and dodged the bolts, using Daivid as a human shield. Wolfe continued to hack at his opponent, though his own aura was turning green from all the small hits he was sustaining.

“Help the lieutenant!” Lin shouted.

“No!” Wolfe yelled back. “Achieve the objective!”

With renewed energy, he resumed his defense, hacking with the lower half of his blade. It bounced off the other’s helmet and shoulder guards, but he used the momentum to keep striking. Few of the hits scored any points, while he continued to lose ground. He heard a yell behind him, and saw on his scopes that a single defender, heretofore hidden on top of the pumping equipment, was shooting his troopers in the back. They hadn’t looked up. Fatal mistake.

He was making more fatal mistakes at the moment. His next slash missed his opponent’s elbow joint, impacting instead on the upper arm. Not enough to disable. The other took advantage of his arm being out of the way to take a shot of his own. One skilful stroke that started in the upper right quadrant of his body and skirted his guard streaked down to the leg joint on the opposite hip and struck home. He could almost feel the other’s glee as the CBS,P tightened around his body, preventing him from moving. He lost his balance and toppled over, his aura reading yellow.

“Lieutenant!” Borden cried.

“Keep fighting,” Daivid ordered them. “Get the … ack!” The CBS,P closed firmly over his windpipe. It loosened in a moment. He gulped in air, and tried to speak again. “Use the … gack! Slag … urk!” The web suit or someone in a control room monitoring him evidently had ideas about him giving orders from beyond. He took the hint.

So did Lin. All three officers had been taken down, along with several more X-Ray troopers. Seven of the fifteen defenders survived. She and the remaining gunners carried on a barrage to protect Jones as he pried open the sump hatch with his can-opener. It let out a pop. Daivid’s eyes watered as gas poured out into the small chamber. The rest of X-Ray Company, stuck out in the hallway, decided discretion was the better part of breathing, and stayed beyond the stench, potting away at the defenders from there. Jones began to feel around in the sump, which was approximately a meter across, swearing colorfully in three or four languages.

The seven, knowing as surely as Daivid did that there was less than two minutes for X-Ray to achieve its objective, moved in blasting out a river of red dashes. The Cockroaches returned fire more slowly. One after another of them fell, suits turning from blue to yellow. It was apparent that not only were they outnumbered, but the defenders had a lot more ammunition than they did. Daivid meant to take the matter up with Commander Iry in the morning, after he’d had some sleep. The smallest figure in the center, whom he identified as Lin, took out the biggest defender with a keenly placed shot to the throat, then her gun clicked audibly.

“Oh, damn!” she shouted, feeling through her side pouches for more magazines. There were none. More guns clicked empty. She turned to the four remaining troopers. “We’re history, guys! Do your best!” They took individual shots, but Daivid could tell they had fewer and fewer charges left. The defenders crawled towards them, inexorably, until Jones raised a hand on high.

“Hey, you!” Jones shouted at the trooper who had dispatched Daivid. “Kill our commander, will you? Here’s my reward to you!” He drew his arm back, then flung it forward, as if throwing something.

The substance barely registered above room temperature in Daivid’s scopes, but the disgusting splat as it struck the trooper in the chest left no doubt as to what it was. The trooper cringed and retreated, batting at its chest. The other Cockroaches, seeing the fantastic reaction, took to Lin’s idea at once, and began to scoop up handfuls of raw sewage from the bubbling sump.

“Hey, ugly!” Ambering shouted, heaving glob after glob at the nearest defender. “Is it raining slag, or is it just your aftershave?”

“This has got to be yours,” Ewanowski said, throwing a headsized dollop of sludge at the largest trooper left. “I recognize the butt print!”

The Cockroaches slung their useless guns aside and began to reach for more material. The stink was overwhelming. The defenders retreated to the walls and covered their heads with their arms as the Cockroaches pelted them with slag. Daivid, lying helplessly beside the door, wished he could crow.

Suddenly, Jones let out a musical yodel of triumph. He raised a blue flashing orb over his head. “I’ve got it!”

At that moment, the lights came on.

O O O

Commander Iry walked into the room, clapping her hands very slowly. “Very good. Very good. That was the ugliest performance I have ever seen in my entire life. Effective, but ugly.” She turned to Daivid as the CBS,P let go of his limbs and let him struggle to his feet. The abused ligament in his thigh erupted into a symphony of pain. He tried to keep the wince off his face as he removed his helmet. He glanced around at the shadows that represented X-Ray Company, some of whom were all but scuffing at the deck with their toes. “You win, son. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Disgusting, but I can’t fault you for resourcefulness. I guess what they say about your unit is true.”