Chapter Twenty-Five
“This is Ivan,” Harry broadcast via suit radio, patting the suit-clad dummy on the shoulder. Some wag—probably Rodriguez, if Harry had to guess—had used a red paintstick to draw angry eyes and fangs on the closed faceplate. The nylon tabard bore the mottos ALL TERRANS MUST DIE! and THE ONLY GOOD ROCKHOUND IS A DEAD ROCKHOUND! In the front row of Harry’s audience, Makarov read the script and visibly rolled his eyes. “And I’ve got bad news. Ivan is a death-dealing, planet-raping, two-gun mojo motherhumper, and he’s utterly unimpressed with the low-bred, knuckle-dragging scum on and around R’Bak. Fortunately for you, I’ve got some new equalizers, and if you promise to kick Kulsian ass, I’ll share.”
He turned around and unclipped the first new weapon from the table set up next to the target and held it in both hands to show it to the assembled class. Three squads of six men attentively watched his every move. One was entirely RockHounds, led by Korelon, but the other two were a mix. Makarov and Rodriguez each headed a squad. Pham had phlegmatically accepted his assignment to back up Makarov.
“That thing looks like the love child of an oversize box wrench and a tire jack!” Zymanski yelled across the all-hands channel. “But it ain’t no gun!”
“Chief, you are so right,” Harry said, smiling big for the benefit of the people in back. “A gun is of questionable utility in this kind of fight. This is a combat grappler. It’s better than a gun. What you do is grab this by the grip, and push the safety like so…”
Suiting actions to words, Harry depressed a green plastic knob that stood proud of the black plastic handle, forcing the other end through the slightly thinner than normal pistol grip. On the opposite side, a corresponding red knob emerged. Riding the grip was a black metal frame along which two rear-folding, spike-tipped crescent arms lay. Between them, where the muzzle of a gun would be, was an actuator plate embossed with the words FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.
“When the red button is showing, Mr. Grabby is not your friend,” Harry said, turning the unit to show the students the safety mechanism. “Red, you’re dead. Do not play with this or try to test fit it on yourself. I’m not going to warn you again. Observe.”
Then, moving quickly, he twisted and shoved the business end of the weapon against the thigh of the dummy’s suit, actuating the pressure plate. The crescent arms snapped forward, spikes engaging the suit material. A previously hidden link snapped from the end of the first jaw to lock against the one opposite. Harry let go, and the unit began to vibrate and shake, although the vacuum of the practice hangar prevented anyone from hearing the ratcheting sounds of a one-way carbide bit forging its way into the dummy’s leg, impelled by a high-torque electric motor. The spiked collar constricted, and the drill burrowed, causing the suit to off-gas. A white mist of frozen water vapor was instantly visible, jetting from the edges of the biting clamp. When the bit punched through the opposite side of the target’s leg, the suit sagged a bit, losing pressure in moments.
“You apply this weapon to your opponent and let go. As long as you give it a good bite on a leg or an arm, it will adjust for the limb diameter, and the rest is automatic. Your enemy will suffer incapacitating bleeding and broken bones, and believe me, this thing hurts! As an added bonus, if you are fighting in vacuum, your enemy will be further distracted by managing an unexpected case of explosive decompression. Either way, they’re out of the fight.”
The comments on the radio link were predictable and largely positive. It was easy to tell the RockHounds from their Terran guests.
“Interesting concept.”
“Mr. Grabby for president!”
“Is this truly practical? It seems clumsy.”
“Sheeeit! Let me have one!”
“Radio silence, please,” Harry overrode the channel, then held up a white metal brick from which nylon straps and buckles dangled. “This is your primary contact distance weapon, a pneumatic punch. It features a captive, sharpened tungsten spike projecting twenty centimeters from the weapon face. It can be used in both micro and under acceleration. The rear of the weapon has a balance rod that projects to the rear. It is three times the mass of the spike, so it requires only six or so centimeters of clearance to keep the user safe. Regardless, you don’t want to actuate this weapon when anything you care about is adjacent to either end. It’s worn under your forearm, like this.”
Harry put the brick back on the table and, fighting the resistance of his suit, laid his forearm along the top. The upper surface of the box was slightly concave and the straps cinched down, wrapping securely around the cuff of his suit gauntlet and just below the crease of his elbow.
“To use it, you simply palm-strike your target, like this.” Harry punched the dummy on the faceplate with the heel of his hand, his fingers tilted upward. There was no sound, but when Harry withdrew his hand, a neat one-centimeter circular hole surrounded by starry cracks was revealed. “The spike auto-deploys and retracts faster than you can see. Make sure you cock your wrist up, just like a cobra strike to the nose. This is a three-shot weapon, powered by a replaceable gas canister.”
Harry punched again, this time on the aluminum neck ring of the dummy helmet. He felt the crunch of the spike as it perforated the softer metal of the ring.
“First you get the Grabby, next you get the Stabby!” Zymanski crowed.
“It will defeat aluminum and thin sheet steel,” Harry added. “To reload, you have to take it off, so make each strike count.”
“Hey!” one of the gray-suited volunteers, who was also a tech, said in scandalized tones. “Who’s going to fix these suits? They’re valuable resources!”
“Great question,” Harry answered in a reasonable tone. “During this mission, we will be operating with constrained resources. We’ll have to maintain our own suits, and, since the assault will almost certainly occur in vacuum, suit maintenance is a top priority. So, for training purposes, we’ll repair the suits. And by ‘we,’ I mean all of you.”
A general groan arose.
“I hate good training,” someone muttered from the rear of second squad. Harry didn’t bother to look up.
“Will we be issued projectile weapons, Major?” Markaz asked. For once, he sounded genuinely polite.
“Yes.” Harry unbuckled the large flap of his thigh holster, exposing the angular, yet familiar, shape of a SpinDog handgun. He withdrew it. With the ease of long practice, he operated the action to expose an empty chamber, which he tilted toward the nearest student, allowing them to verify the weapon was safe. “We’ll be using a standard SpinDog caseless design featuring a replaceable magazine, an oversize trigger assembly for use with EVA gauntlets, and a holographic sight. Note the large compensator baffles.”
Harry rotated the weapon to highlight the small spade-like baffles at the muzzle. “These offset what little recoil is present. Because of the low chamber pressure, there is no reciprocating mechanism. The weapon is nearly without recoil, because the rounds are fired at a low velocity, and ignite solid rocket motors after departing the muzzle. They require three meters to achieve full velocity, so this is not a contact weapon.”
He replaced the pistol in the holster. For once he still had the rapt attention of every member of the class. Harry chuckled inwardly. Soldiers and weapons.
“All right, Pham, you take Alpha team and conduct a familiarization and handling drill. Sergeant Rodriguez, you get Bravo. Charlies, form on me. Once we make sure you knuckleheads won’t accidently amputate any limbs or make any new and unwelcome holes in each other, we’ll start live-fire training. Remember, shooting yourself or your buddy is not good training.”
The combined scrounging capabilities of the notoriously independent-minded soldiers under Murphy’s command had to be seen to be believed. Or in this case, very carefully not seen. Two large digital display screens, crudely affixed to the appropriated RockHound outpost wall and connected with temporary wiring, were replaying an ancient American professional football game. Harry didn’t even want to know where the Terran-style equipment had been before it was scrounged. It was enough that there was a sports-bar ambiance to the place. However, that ambiance was spoiled when Harry consulted the drink in hand. Even at the outside diameter of the slowly spinning trading outpost the gravity was minimal, so every drink was served in a closed container. Thus, the abomination he held in hand: pouch beer.
Harry scanned the faces in the small, communal gaming space that served the diminutive RockHound outpost as an informal bar.
The whole gang was celebrating the end of training.
Or lamenting the loss of their freedom. Isolation would begin tomorrow.
Could be both, Harry realized. Loud conversations, red faces, and serious drinking were common around the small, waist-high tables bolted to the deck. The bulkheads weren’t bare rock exactly, but the uneven contours under the white polyfoam sealant clearly showed the mining origins of the little base.
Drinking beer from a straw stuck into a partially silvered pouch reminded Harry of middle school football practices, not his time doing bar crawls in Coronado. The incongruity added to the sense of dislocation, the feeling of being “elsewhere” that had been the ever-present companion of every member of the Lawless Harry knew well enough to ask. One of Harry’s favorite things about R’Bak and fighting alongside the Sarmatchani was the certainty of knowing his place and being accepted in it. Then again, it could have been as simple as being in a gravity well and having dirt under his feet.
The much lighter gravity of their current base was definitely a factor, Harry admitted.
After the weapons familiarization and some limited live-fire testing on the preceding larger RockHound outpost, the group had exhausted every training opportunity possible under the secrecy restrictions there. Compelled by the ever-shortening timeline, Murphy had ordered the teams and their trainer to a smaller base where relative isolation would permit mission-specific scenario preparation. A significant portion of the station had been set aside, and the team was confined within its boundaries. No one else was allowed inside, and all logistics, from food to medical, were self-contained. It also meant no one in the “bar” was likely to complain about the unauthorized modifications to the outpost’s information net or the oversize, purloined Terran flat-screen displays.
“Tomorrow’s the big day, boss,” Rodriguez said, addressing Harry in perfect Ktor and closing the distance to Harry’s table. Like Harry, he was drinking the fermented RockHound beverage to which the Terrans assigned the label “beer,” but which had seen neither hops nor malt in its life. “You promised to reveal the mysteries of the universe to us. Any chance of a sneak peek?”
“Maybe I’ll trade you, Marco,” Harry replied, eyeing his pouch with suspicion. “First you have to tell me what the hell this is. It’s not beer.”
“Well, sir,” Rodriguez studied his own pouch for a moment before swigging a bit more through his straw. “This here drink is amber-colored, carbonated, and very cold. It’s also got a bit of kick.”
“Not answering the question.”
“It’s also free.” Rodriguez dropped his empty and fished in a cargo pocket for another. “Free is good.”
“I think I hate it,” Harry said decisively, and finished his pouch. “I still want to know what it’s made from, Marco.”
“Actually, I’ve seen what passes for a brewery here,” Pham said, joining them. He held another pouch, this one with the blue label that universally designated fresh water. “I respectfully suggest ignorance is the better part of…happiness?”
“You’re mixing your metaphors, Pham,” Rodriguez said, waving an unopened pouch at the shorter man. He dropped it in front of Harry when Pham shook his head no. “Ask the college boy here if I’m right, or if I’m right.”
“Sergeant Rodriguez, more important than what’s in the beer tonight is how you feel tomorrow, eh, Dai Uy?” Pham asked his teammate. He turned and smiled approvingly at Harry when the SEAL declined another beer. “You know what the men who drink too much will find tomorrow morning?”
“No rank in the mess, Pham,” Harry answered, taking another pull at the pouch. “I appreciate the honor, but lay off the Vietnamese. It could confuse the Hounds. But what the drinkers will find tomorrow is a big head, unless they drink plenty of water or have something handy from the R’Bak pharmacopeia. Doesn’t matter to me. They’re all big boys and can make their own decisions. I’m their trainer, not their babysitter.”
“And who do you think they regard as their leader, Dai Uy?” Pham asked, pointedly ignoring Harry’s request to skip the rank honorific. “Who do they look to?”
“The mission OIC is Makarov,” Harry said with a grunt. “I’m pretty sure the RockHounds have their own idea of who’s in charge. Oh, nearly forgot, but I’ll be announcing it tomorrow. I was able to get another concession from Murphy. Major Korelon will keep the third squad and run it during the operation—under Makarov, of course.”
“The RockHounds remind me a bit of home,” Pham said. “This is not a recommendation, you understand.”
“These guys remind you of NVA cadre, Pham?” Rodriguez asked incredulously. “That’s a stretch.”
“They are bound by process and regulation,” Pham explained. “Like the Vietnamese army, they are trained to work inside a formal hierarchy. Questioning an order is simply not done, or at least is unlikely to be survivable. Men may reliably follow Makarov or obey Korelon’s orders. They won’t be inspired by either. Those two are officers, but they are not leaders.”
“Your army wasn’t inspired by their leaders?” Rodriguez asked. “I find that hard to believe. I saw VC do crazy things, endure impossible hardships.”
“Quite the opposite, Sergeant. The most important thing the Viet Cong and the regular Vietnamese army had was inspiration. Certainly, we didn’t enjoy the same strengths as the Americans. The American way of war was incomprehensible to us. You questioned everything, continuously changed your ways of fighting, and enjoyed infinitely more supply and greater firepower than we did. The thing that kept us alive was inspiration. It was the one thing we had more of than you. We didn’t have to win. We just had to never give up.”
Harry didn’t respond, even though the last barb had been planted uncomfortably close to home.
“As long as everyone fights, you can pull this off,” Harry said, straightening up from the table as he sensed another person approaching.
A slightly boozy RockHound didn’t quite stagger into the table. He recovered and slapped a fistful of pouches on the tabletop, where they sloshed gently.
“Markaz, haven’t you had enough?” Rodriguez asked, helping the man capture a stray pouch.
“No, I have not,” Markaz replied, taking perceptible care to articulate with precision. Using a bit too much concentration, he pushed a beer in front of each man. “Wanted to toast the new leader of our squad!”
Harry shot Rodriguez a meaningful look. Taking the hint, the American sergeant put his arm around Markaz’s shoulders and gently steered him to another table.
“And if flexibility is needed?” Pham asked, ignoring the interruption. “What if the plan changes in response to an unforeseen event? Something outside their experience? Who will lead us then?”
“The plan is solid,” Harry replied. Hedging only a little, he jerked his head toward the retreating RockHound. “Markaz is solid. The training is solid. Nothing fancy is required. There aren’t any hostages to complicate the op. No pesky rules of engagement about escalation of force. No camera crews embedded in the team, getting underfoot and asking distracting questions. Just get onboard, kill the Kulsians, hog-tie any who inconveniently surrender, and break the minimum amount of stuff.”
“I see,” Pham said, resuming the blank-faced expression that Harry had come to recognize as the shorter man’s face of judgment. Noncoms were the same the world over. Any world. Pham’s probing questions weren’t nearly as subtle as he probably thought they were.
“It’s an early morning tomorrow,” Harry said, seizing on a reason to escape Pham’s Miyagi-san treatment. He stood and genially slapped the smaller man on the back. “Don’t stay up too late. I’m going to go get rid of some of this rented beer and call it a night.”
A few people hollered glad hellos and waved more pouches as he made his way to the door, but Harry just returned a wave to the entire room and slipped out. Once outside the club, however, he made his way to the circular corridor that ran along the widest circumference of the base.
What he needed was a good stretch of the legs.
A brisk walk wasn’t really feasible. Space was one factor. The outpost was small enough that cubic was valuable, so even the main corridor served as a storage area. Racks of tanks and stacked, standardized shipping containers were cabled to the bulkheads, leaving a space that wove from the center and side to side to make room for the supplies that consumed floor space. Besides, exerting the amount of muscular effort required to speed walk or run would’ve sent Harry rebounding from the overhead. However, even if he had to remain vigilant, carefully walking in the sharply reduced gee, Harry’s nervous tension welcomed the sensation of motion.
That lasted only a few minutes.
They caught sight of each other simultaneously.
Korelon had been out for a stroll, too, walking in the opposite direction. They paused, and Harry warily eyed his counterpart. Apart from brief, uninspired exchanges in training, they hadn’t exchanged any words since Harry’s belated attempt at an apology, which seemed like ages ago.
“Good evening, Major Tapper,” Korelon said. Was there a hint of sincere warmth there?
“Hi, Major,” Harry said, affably. If the RockHound could make nice, he could too. “It’s a little crowded in the lounge so I decided to try a short stroll. Care to accompany me?”
He gestured broadly along the corridor, as if it were a grand promenade and not a twisted, claustrophobic, low-gee tube with a raised plastic floor and uneven walls.
A heartbeat later, Korelon offered a curt nod and turned sideways, indicating with a hand he would adopt Harry’s direction of march.
After a half circuit of the station, Harry had become sufficiently accustomed to Korelon’s presence to try a question. “What do you think of the training so far?”
“It is quite unlike our own,” Korelon answered promptly. “There is a different rhythm to our methods.”
“Oh?”
“I adhere to the SpinDog approach to employ checklists, rather than relying upon memory,” the RockHound said. “If there is an emergency, there is a procedure to respond. The Terran training varies considerably. Your emphasis on action over deliberation or acting according to preexisting plans can make an emergency worse. If one is tired, injured, or there is an equipment failure, one can withdraw and prepare again. The Terran method requires we resolve chaos on its own terms. This seems as likely to amplify the chaos as resolve it.”
Harry thought for the space of several steps before replying. “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but back on Earth, long ago, my country was known for our unusual way of making war. For a long period, America was militarily supreme on the planet.”
“That is when you established planetary hegemony and ruled?”
“No, no, not at all,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Whole different conversation. What I was saying was, at the start of our ascendancy, the established powers had been intermittently fighting for a long time. They were quite accustomed to each other’s strengths and weaknesses. A very high-level enemy officer, what you would call a K’Seps’bel, made the comment that planning to fight the Americans was difficult because we didn’t follow our own doctrine or procedures, and to fight us was to fight chaos. His army, his military, wasn’t designed to be as flexible. His side lost. Decisively.”
“You ignore your procedures and regard this as a strength?” Korelon sounded incredulous. “When resources are scarce and the margin for survival is narrow, risking so much is dangerous.”
“Less dangerous than doing nothing,” Harry answered. “Or being too slow. Your turn.”
Korelon looked the question at Harry by raising one eyebrow.
“Your turn to ask a question,” Harry explained. “Anything.”
They paced together for a few minutes. Korelon was quiet. Ahead, the corridor visibly curved upward, following the physical limits of the station. The Hound suddenly stopped, and Harry turned to see what the matter was, putting a hand on a pallet of racked gas cylinders to arrest his momentum.
Korelon was looking at him intently.
“Since my assignment, I have learned much,” he finally said, placing his hands behind his back. “Weapons, tactics—those I expected. But I have spent more time and in closer proximity with other ranks in the last weeks than I have since I was posted to the spins as a very young man. I know more about them than ever before. At the intersection of completing this mission successfully and reducing our casualties lies the need to have the best leader for the operation. I flatter myself that I have improved. But—and it is difficult for me to admit this—I believe you are the right person, not I. So, why are you not leading this mission, Major Tapper?”
Oof. It was the question Harry really didn’t want to discuss with anyone, especially Korelon. He knew his only answer was a tangled mess of rationalizations, anger, resentment, and loss.
It will only complicate things to be open with anyone. Defer any answer.
Screw this guy, tell him it’s none of his damn business!
“That’s a complicated question, Major Korelon.”
“Not so complicated, Major,” the RockHound said, acknowledging a salute from a technician, who hurried past. “My Legate shared a record of your time on the surface of R’Bak. Clearly you are no coward. You belonged to an elite group on your home planet, so it is clear you should be accustomed to the pressure and stress of command.”
Harry didn’t answer and resumed walking. Korelon kept pace as they continued their circumnavigation.
“There is an additional point,” Korelon said after a few more minutes. “I think you may not be aware of it. I did not purely volunteer for this mission, Major. It was suggested—strongly suggested—to me that I do so.”
“Then why did you come at all, Major?” Harry asked, both glad the earlier question had been left behind and surprised at this level of candor from someone who had previously cultivated an air of superiority and a barrier of silence.
“You are aware we RockHounds are considered insular, yes?” Korelon asked with a narrow glance at Harry. “We do not permit many visitors to our stations, and we treat others differently from how we treat each other. Our senior ranks appear to enjoy privileges inaccessible to the lower ranks.”
“Yes,” Harry answered, turning a bit to fit his shoulders through a now familiar narrow bit in the corridor. Everyone knew about the RockHounds and their stiff attitudes. It was part of the reason it was so easy to both dislike and distrust them as new and unproven allies.
“The reason is trust.”
Almost like he can read my fricking mind.
“Our senior ranks are different. We take an oath to be responsible not just for ourselves or our caste, but for the entirety of the Family. We make the survival of the Family our personal responsibility. This means all ’va, all of the Hounds who are born to the blood, are ready to place themselves between the heart of the Family and vacuum, and do so willingly, in order that the Family survive. I trust other ’va to do this, and they trust me, regardless of whether I agree with a particular strategy or a tactic. Legate Orgunz has decided to accept your colonel’s mad scheme, and so my disagreement is no longer relevant. I was shamed when I understood I had somehow forgotten this. My Legate, representing all the RockHound Families, reminded me. That is why I am here. There is only the Family. So, I ask you, Major Tapper, where is your Family?”