The Weapon

  The battle stretched north of the city, engulfing several strongpoints of various contingents, factions, units, all theoretically allies. This did help confirm that they were all on our side, because they were all taking fire. Of course, requiring your allies to die is a hell of a way to have them prove their earnest intentions.

  On paper, the UN had sufficient modern counterbattery and interdiction units to suppress any local artillery stupid enough to fire. In reality, this was as much a joke as the rest of the UN.

  Rather than choose the best tactical positions, they'd chosen to emplace guns where they'd do the least damage to the local environment, with consideration of the emotional well-being of the host culture, and where readily extractable by air assets in case of potential capture. That last really limited the range at which they could operate. I can understand not wanting the enemy to seize support weapons, so it was a limitation to work around, but I could think of better ways to prevent the enemy capturing pieces. Apparently, however, booby-trapping the munitions was a no-no, in case some luckless innocent native were to discover a cache as he just happened to poke around an abandoned artillery site in the middle of a battle, while walking his explosive-detection dog and carrying a machinegun, and "elevate the tube and slag the breech!" was not allowed without proper authority from above. The battery commanders were not allowed to be responsible for their own guns. They were allowed to extract the breechblock and exfiltrate with it to render the gun inoperable, but exfiltrating without specific orders to do so was a court martial offense. So it usually came down to abandoning the gun at the last second because of not having the authority to destroy it, and saving one's career at the expense of friendly casualties. This is what is known technically as a "giant group clusterfuck."

  So, all the guns were in crappy positions, close to the city, exposed on rough terrain and could only be evacuated by aircraft. This meant they were rather hard to defend against mountain infantry. Several tubes had already been captured and were being used to shell parts of the city. As they were larger than most of the local howitzers, they had better range. The enemy were short-sighted, desperate religious freaks who nevertheless had a better mindset for fighting than the UN did, so they were using them well. As they'd had time to research this, their own arty was dialed in as support for the positions they'd captured. The captured positions all had good interdiction guns, to shoot down incoming fire. They were as solidly defended as before, just in enemy hands. A UN Mountain Infantry battalion, one of those that actually fought and reasonably well at that, was now pinned down as it tried to recover some of the emplaced guns.

  Oh, did I mention that the UN satellite network was still giving us spurious and inaccurate data? Their transmissions were sporadic, their automatic grid coordinates were nonsensical, and it took ten segs ("27 minutes") to find someone with a paper map and compass to give us a good location on them.

  Someone had to save those poor troops (or maybe his own career) using any means available. Luckily, whoever that was thought for just long enough to demand the best. I'll argue slightly with his comparison, as he teamed us up with a UN Special Unit. They're good at what they do, but they still have the fundamental flaw of being trained to fight a tactically inferior force. They never train for engagements against superior forces, as we do all the time. Still, we were all real soldiers, who rated our missions in terms of numbers of bodies piled up and wounded screaming, not in terms of smiles on the faces of villagers.

  So I got called, I called my team, we grabbed our heavy gear, all smiles at the thought of getting to use it in a real battle, and all twisting guts at the thought of getting to use it in a real battle.

  First, though, we had to have a briefing. This was a good thing. The briefing came down under orders from some general (the UN had far too many brass), who was in "operations" but somehow was off-planet in orbit, not on the ground where the work was being done. It was presented to us by a pretty boy captain who was in dress blues and obviously had never left the compound. This was a bad thing.

  Obviously, the best way to present it would be a quick rundown on approach routes, air corridors, terrain, maps and equipment, hashed out between me and my UN counterpart, on the display in our helmets, with all our troops linked in to provide input, and pilots, arty, etc. placed subordinate to us and at our disposal. Naturally, this is the way we proceeded.

  Your ass it was.

  We sat in chairs and had the briefing. We sat in chairs while men and women died out in the mountains. We had a specially prepared briefing, with charts and tables and clever quotes from history (they thought the quotes were clever. Sun Tzu, Caesar and Clausewitz wouldn't have thought so. Hell, I didn't think so) and neat animations of how we'd overrun the enemy.

  I couldn't help but notice that we didn't discuss commo. Or logistics. Or air support. Or chain of command. Somehow, the orders from the General (Furglen was his name) would get to us, and intelligence from us would get back to him, and he'd know what to do, relay that to us, and it would be in a timely enough fashion to make a rat's ass worth of difference to our operation.

  Oh, did I say "our" operation? I'm sorry. I would have called this one "Operation Bend Over and Flinch." General Fucklen called his operation "Proud Panther." I'm told variously that the names are selected randomly by computer, or to reflect the important aspects of the mission. I still don't know. I don't think it matters. We didn't need an operation with a name. A frag order would have done, to be followed by proper supporting paperwork later. Naumann would have said, "Ken, get up on that mountain, find out what they need to get loose, do it if you can, call for backup if you need it. I'll have arty, aviation, infantry, and Blazers standing by for your call," and I would have left in fifty seconds. Of course, there's no glory unless there's a mission name for the news.

  The only good part was that the UN unit commander and his Master Sergeant First Class looked as eager, nervous, and unimpressed as I felt. We met eyes a few times (we didn't get introduced other than to have our names announced), and shook our heads.

  As soon as possible, I said, "Captain, I'd like to bring my team in on this briefing. Some of them have unique skills in mountain warfare and in alpine forest environments that could be relevant to this discussion."

  He replied, "That's a good idea, Warrant Leader Rich, but due to security requirements, only command staff are being briefed at this time."

  Only command staff. Never mind that I'd be telling my kids as soon as I left here, orders or no. Never mind that I had smuggled in a headset and was relaying to Deni. Never mind that we already knew the basics from gossip around the base and clear transmissions off the mountain, because commo security was a joke among the Unos. Forget that telling people what you need with sufficient lead time makes them better able to deal with a screwed up situation. We had "security" to think about. I didn't ask why, if it was so secret, we had a press release of the high points to issue to our respective nation's media.

  We watched a battle plan on vid, wherein computer simulations representing the UN team and ourselves marauded across the hillside, took positions and rounded up enemy concentrations while the Mountain Division occupied positions until the "captured" artillery personnel could be relieved and replaced with others. It was all very pretty. It was presented at the level of tactical understanding possessed by a ten-year-old. Ten Earth years.

  Then we had an environmental assessment. Now, to me, a combat environmental assessment is "What terrain do I have to exploit, what resources are present, what weather can I expect?" This was not that. This was a detailed plan of all major local life forms and how we were to avoid damaging them excessively. Really. We were not to use lethal weapons or call for support unless the chance of hitting the enemy was "relevantly greater" than the risk of damaging the environment. I didn't even bother to comment on that stupid idea

  Did you notice that the briefing assumed that the UN and we had identical gear and training?

  Eventually, we got
outside. We all stretched. We looked at each other and said nothing for several seconds. I finally broke the silence. "I'm Warrant Leader Ken Rich. This is Senior Sergeant Frank Walsh."

  "Captain Glen Wilder," he said. "This is Master Sergeant First Class Petra Pandis."

  "What do you know about how we operate, Captain?" I asked.

  "Not much," he admitted. "You're very hush-hush, can go a lot of places, and do a lot of odd terrain training."

  I nodded. This meant he knew more but didn't want to admit to intel, and knew less and wanted me to fill him in. "Our squad is twenty. Two fire teams of six with combination weapons and one support weapon each. One weapons squad with sniper team, anti-armor team and heavy machinegun. Frank and myself in charge. We'll be using exomusculature, body armor, jump harnesses and tactical helmets with four layer visual overlay on contact lenses."

  "JAYsus!" he exclaimed. "That should about do it."

  Then he continued, "I have two squads of eight, each with three buddy pairs and a support weapon pair, plus a squad leader. I've got a machinegun and antiarmor in a weapons' section, and myself and Petra. We'll be wearing powered assault armor."

  I didn't want to tell him my opinion of that, yet. He was good, probably the best he could be with what he had, but what he had sucked for this type of work, and he didn't even know it.

  "So let's gear up and meet at the flightline," I said.

  "Roger that," he replied.

  Frank had been over to deal with the UN over some minor details, I asked him for a download.

  "Shit, boss, it can't get better than what we see, and that licks ass," he said as we strode to our vehicle.

  "Tell me," I said.

  "Well, you notice Pandis is fairly small?"

  "Small, cute but alert-looking, yes," I agreed.

  "Boss, they have lower physical requirements for women. And they don't require them to take muscle enhancers."

  "In a special warfare unit?" I asked, my voice starting to take on a squeaky, cringing tone.

  "Even here," he said as we climbed in. I waved the driver back to our tactical operations center on the far side of the base, inside our own perimeter. That distance told me what the UN, meaning "Earth," really thought of us, and that they'd only brought us in to make it a "multi-national" operation, without any regard or knowledge of our capabilities.

  "Fuck me," I said.

  "Worse," he said.

  "Worse?" I asked. I was afraid to hear more.

  "They have a precise quota of gender, orientation, race, nationality, education and social backgrounds for their troops. Whether the troops want it or not. So some of the troops we're going after are going to be idiots, some weaklings, some won't speak a language the translation programs are familiar with, or that have enough vocabulary, and some will not be trained for this at all."

  "What shitlicking, dogfucking, bastard son of a goat came up with that?" I asked.

  "It's their policy. The military cannot discriminate. It's bad for society to suggest that certain people are superior to others, and casualties are the small price you have to pay to maintain that equality."

  "That illusion," I said.

  "I have a unit roster," he said. "At least a few of them are disabled."

  "God and Goddess, is that a possibility?"

  "There are four paraplegics undergoing regen therapy in the artillery battery we're heading for first. They're designated as maintenance and support staff."

  "They have fucking wheelchair ramps in a firebase?" I said, the cringe getting worse, the pucker factor about to kill me, and my guts churning with acid. Ohhhh shit. I grabbed my comm and logged in. I needed more info in a hurry. I tried to control my breathing; I didn't need a panic attack or to hyperventilate.

  Yes, I knew the UN had civilian contractors, and less than optimal recruits. It never occurred to me in my worst fucking nightmares that they'd be so criminally irresponsible to stick people psychologically and physically unsuited for combat into firefights.

  I reminded myself that this would be the last time I reminded myself that the UN regarded people as expendable units to be sacrificed to the greater glory of the human whole, to prove that "Everyone matters" and "Everyone counts."

  Warfare is my venue, and if it bothers you to hear that most of you don't matter and don't count in the subject of warfare, then screw you. Call me an elitist, call me an asshole, call me George. You each have your place. A conference room with a screen full of programming or statistical or accounting figures is not mine. The middle of a war with unfriendly strangers shooting at you while bombs blow off and some asshole allegedly on your own side tries to screw you to death to win a medal is probably not yours. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I want to claim that one either. But we are different.

  Keep in mind that while this was going on, people were still dying. We should have been en route at once, accepting that we would take a few casualties, to save them many casualties now and strategic position and more casualties later. That is what we're for. Instead, we'd had a conference. I tiredly gathered the team and everyone drugged up for the second fight of the day. No one complained. Good kids.

  It actually wasn't as bad as Frank had braced me for. Policy or not, a Special Unit exists to fight, and stays alive by being good at it. They found ways to shuffle off the deadwood, and I was relatively happy with the group I met. They were a rogue's gallery, to be sure, but handled lethal weapons (as opposed to the non-lethal stuff most Unos were issued) with familiarity, and knew how to use their gear. That was a good sign to start with. And they were all English speakers, even if it was a second language. It doesn't matter what language a unit uses, but everyone needs to use the same one, and well enough to get across any basic combat data.

  The flight line was dusty and crude, but had a decent runway. All the aprons were either basic concrete, or sectional polymer or even aluminum matting snapped together into sheets. The buildings were all knockdown frames. Despite the crudity, it was modern and complete. Which was a good thing, as we had to use a large lifter for this crowd.

  In gear with full armor, helmets, exomusculature, chameleon suit, jump harness and weapons, the twenty of us scaled in at about 200 kilograms each. The twenty-four UN troops were in solid assault armor, which is a polyceramic crablike shell with a musculature, jump jets, weapons and mounts and an onboard microturbine generator plus fuel. The power supply needs more armor. They massed in at a hefty 450 kilograms or so each. So we broke fourteen tons total, just for us.

  However, those suits are subject to failure. One cannot move inside one that's deadlined, so they had a five-person recovery section with extraction gear and a mini vertol. Then, they needed a security section for that, and to guard the craft when it was down, because they had to have support nearby, since the onboard fuel bunker was good for only about eight hours (one third of an Earth day).

  We have variable power for the exos. Full power is as potent as the coffins our counterparts wore. Partial power would last us a day or more, and we could turn it off, humping on foot only, so as to use power only for our sensor gear. In an emergency, we dump the leg armor to move faster, and in dire need, can strip off the exo and abandon it. I suppose some people feel better inside a case, but I like to be able to feel my environment. Maybe I didn't play enough comm games growing up. Vid screens and handles don't seem real to me.

  I had the feeling we were going to go crashing through the brush, alerting everything within ten klicks to our presence, and accomplish very little. I was correct.

  We slogged aboard, shook hands all around, Earth fashion. You use the right hand only and don't grab the forearm with the left. Everyone stared at Kirby, or rather, at Sphinx and Rasputin. They were in chameleon armor only. That was expensive enough as it was, being custom made for every animal. While leopards are bright, they can't control an exo, and let's face it, they don't need them. The effect of meeting growling, trained killers with commo gear and vid, dressed in armor that stopped clea
r of their burnished claws was intimidating to these experienced killers. I hoped it would be a bomb to our enemies.

  Let me dispel a myth here: that we use the leopards and porpoises to plant explosives and then blow them up. No, we don't. Try thinking. These are not everyday zoo leopards or even wild ones. They are the product of generations of breeding for an animal that is stable, comfortable with people, able to take direction and can have an IQ as high as 115. They are far smarter than most people. Then we train them from birth. Each is a multimillion credit animal, raised to work with a particular person. They're as much soldiers as the rest of us, and we don't throw them away or even expose them lightly. My time with the cats was special, and they were as much my friends as Kit or Tyler. They are used where their senses and the fear factor will be of positive effect, and where we need a very stealthy infiltrator. Leopards are so good at that, in fact, that for a century they were thought near extinction because so few were seen. The leopard population was fine. They are simply that good at hiding. The porpoises serve a similar purpose in water.

  We still had to await launch, while our people were getting smeared. The bird should have been hot and waiting, and rolled as we boarded, even before the ramp came up. Worse yet, it was a civilian contractor aircrew. The pilot came back, nodded and said, "I'm Werzel Nischalke. I'll be flying you." Sure, he looked dashing in his affected blue flight suit and customized helmet. Sure, he got paid for completion of the mission, and probably better than his military counterparts. He was probably very competent, I hoped. He was a brave son of a bitch to be over enemy territory in obvious civilian garb. Still, it chafes me to have someone I cannot dictate orders to in an emergency. There are times I need to be Ghengis Khan and brutally harsh in my discipline. Sillyvilians can refuse and pout. I don't like it.