"I think this is goin' pretty good," Colonel Cutprice opined. He ducked as a stray railgun round glanced off the shot-up piece of combat armor shielding him. "Could've been worse."
"Would've been worse if it hadn't been for that late shipment of Bouncing Barbies," Sergeant Major Wacleva grumped. "And the Spanish Inquisition."
" 'I've got a list, I've got a little list,' " Sunday said, belly-crawling over to their position. "We could use a few Bouncing Barbies out here, sir." He popped his head up over the armor and ducked back down. "There has been a fine killing, but it could always be better."
Cutprice shook his head. "You know why they're called 'Bouncing Barbies,' Sunday?"
"Yes, sir," the sergeant replied. "They really ought to be called Duncan's Folly. But they call 'em 'Barbies' because it is alliterative and, like Barbie, they just up and cut you off at the knees if you get anywhere near them. You know she would. The cold-eyed bitch."
The M-281A anti-Posleen area denial weapon was one of the few commonly available bits of "GalTech," the technology that the Galactic Federation had first offered then been unable to supply in any significant quantity.
The device was the bastard child of a mistake, a mistake made by one of the members of the 1st Battalion 555th Mobile Infantry. In the early days of the conflict, Sergeant Duncan, who was a notorious tinkerer, had tinkered a Personal Protection Field into removing all its safety interlocks and then expending all of its power in a single brief surge.
The surge, and the removed safety interlocks, had created a circular "blade" that cut through several stories of the barracks he was in at the time. And, quite coincidentally, through his roommate's legs.
It took quite some time for all the right questions to be asked and in the proper way. But finally it was determined that the boxes were relatively easy for the Indowy technicians to produce, even one at a time. And they easily could be fitted into a human device called a "scatterable mine platform."
The resultant artillery round threw out forty-eight mines, each of which was slightly mobile and had a conformable appearance; the mine was a flattened, circular disk, somewhat like a "cow-patty." The surface could change color and texture depending upon the background, but the default setting was the yellow of Posleen blood, for reasons that became obvious.
After being released from the artillery round in flight, the disks would scatter across a "footprint" about two hundred meters long and seventy meters wide. Then if anything came within two meters of it, the mine would "hop" up one meter and create a field of planar force that extended out fifty meters in every direction. The field would cut through anything except the most advanced Galactic armor, which meant sliced and diced Posleen.
What was nice about the system, from the humans' perspective, was that it had up to six attacks on "onboard" batteries. After its attack it would scuttle sideways slightly and "hide" again, waiting for the next wave of Posleen and looking for all the world like one of the unpleasant "Posleen bits" that was left behind. Although the piles of chopped up Posleen generally gave away the fact that there were Bouncing Barbies in the area. Even to the moronic normals. Since the Posleen generally reacted to minefields by running normals over them until they were clear, this gave the capability to deal with multiple waves, which normal mines did not.
"We really need some out here, sir," Sunday insisted. "For one thing, when they fall on a big pile of dead like this they chop 'em up into bits. It would make it easier to move out. And it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch."
"You're so ate up you make O'Neal seem like a piker, Sunday," Sergeant Major Wacleva said with a death's head grin. He obviously approved.
"Call but upon the name of Beelzebub," Mike said striding up the hill. He knelt down by the armor and patted it fondly. "Juarez. He's been with the battalion since before I took over Bravo Company. He used to be in Stewart's squad. Good NCO. Hell of a loss."
Cutprice really looked at the armor for the first time; something, an HVM or a plasma cannon, had eaten the top of the armor. "How many did you lose, Major?"
"Twenty-six," O'Neal said, standing up to look over the slight parapet. His appearance was apparently ignored for a moment then a hurricane of fire descended on him. "Most of 'em were newbies of course. They do the stupidest things."
Cutprice and Wacleva ducked and huddled into their heavy body armor while Sunday cursed and crawled sideways to retrieve one of the railguns. The fifty-pound combination of motorized tripod and railgun had been hit by a stray round and tossed backwards. One glance determined that it was a goner.
"Damnit, Colonel," the sergeant called. "You just got my gun shot up!"
"Oh, sorry about that," O'Neal said. He sat down in the mud and reconfigured his visor to external view. "Cutprice, why are you hunkering down in the mud? Oh, never mind. Do you know if there are any more Barbies around? We need to get them out on the slope. They chop up the Posleen real fine; that will make it easier to move out when the time comes and besides it's fun as hell to watch."
"Were you guys separated at birth or something?" Cutprice asked. "And we're huddling in here because the ricochets from your armor were just a tad unpleasant."
Mike took off his helmet and looked over at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You were just taking fire, hotshot," Wacleva said. "You did notice, right?"
"No," Mike said simply. "I didn't. Sorry about that. I guess . . . it wasn't all that intense."
"Maybe not for you," Wacleva said, pulling a spent 1mm railgun flechette out of his body armor. "Some people, however, aren't covered in plasteel."
"And that's the problem of course," Cutprice said grumpily. "If we try going over that ridge, we'll be so much hamburger."
"We need to break up this force some," Sunday said. "Nukes, nukes, nukie nukes."
"That would be nice," Cutprice said. He was well aware that they barely had the Posleen force stopped, much less "backing up," which was the requirement. "Unfortunately, the President still says no. The artillery is getting into battery . . ."
"Spanish Inquisition time?" O'Neal asked, opening up first one armored pouch then another. Finally he gave up. "Sergeant Major, I apologize most abjectly for causing you some temporary discomfort. Now, could I bum a smoke?"
"Yeah," Wacleva said with a laugh, pulling out an unfiltered Pall Mall. "Keren started the Spanish Inquisition. Send in a platoon of MPs each with a sheet of questions and answers. Walk up to the senior officers and NCOs and ask them three questions off of the sheet. If they don't get two out of three right, they're relieved. Before you know it, you've lost half your dead weight and people who know what they're doing are all of a sudden in charge."
"The only thing I've got against it is that I didn't think of it first," Mike said. He put the cigarette in his mouth, lifted his left arm and a two meter gout of flame suddenly spurted from one of the many small orifices on the surface of his suit. He took a drag on the cigarette and the flamethrower went out. "It's not much good with infantry and armor units, but artillery is a skilled branch. If you don't know how to shore a fucking trench, you shouldn't be in the engineers. If you don't know how to calculate the proper size of an antenna, you shouldn't be in commo. And if you don't know how to compute winds aloft, you shouldn't be a artillery battalion-fucking-commander."
"I gotta get me one of those," Sunday said, pulling out a pack of Marlboros. "Can I try?"
"Sure," O'Neal said.
Sunday leaned back from the gout of flame and sucked on the cancer stick. "Love it."
"It's not standard," Mike pointed out. "It's one of the modifications I suggested that got nixed in committee. I believe in a Ronco suit."
"It slices, dices and makes Julienne fries?" Cutprice said with a laugh.
"You got it," O'Neal said soberly. "Obviously it's not just for lighting cigarettes. So, how do we get these fuckers reduced to the point that we can get them backing up? And maybe have somebody standing after we're done."
"I take it you're not up to the task?"
"Nope," O'Neal said, leaning back on the late Sergeant Juarez. "We took about one in four casualties this morning. Not as bad as Roanoke—that was a real shitstorm—but if we go over that ridge they'll eat us alive. We can hold the box but not move out of it. And we only hold the box because the arty is holding one side."
"They're getting slaughtered down there," Wacleva said with a gesture of his chin towards the hospital. "That'll cut down on 'em some."
"Have you really looked over the hill, Sergeant Major?" Sunday asked incredulously. "They're losing maybe a thousand a minute, which seems like a lot. But at that rate we'll be here for forty days and forty nights."
"Yeah, and in the meantime they'll be reproducing all up and down the coast," Mike pointed out. "The horny bastards." He scratched his chin and took another drag on the cigarette. Reaching over he picked up a shattered boma blade and held it overhead. After a few moments, railgun rounds started to crack overhead followed by the occasional missile. Finally a stream of rounds smashed the sword out of his hand, taking half of the remaining blade away in the process.
"Fire pressure's still up there," O'Neal opined as the others dug themselves out of the ground again. "Sometimes if you pin them in place and don't kill the first million or so they run out of bullets. But when you're killing wave after wave the guys behind are always fresh and have full loads. We used that in . . . Christ . . . Harrisburg One, I think. Pinned the front-ranks down until they ran out of fire, moved forward and dug in again so the rear ranks could come forward a bit then did it all over again. Sort of. I think. It's been a long time. But if we try that here, we'll get flanked. That was when we were retaking the outer defenses and we were covered on a narrow front."
"So obviously that is out," Cutprice said sourly. "Any other ideas?"
Mike rolled on his back and looked at the sky. It was still overcast, but the light rain had faded. The sun was up in the east and it might just burn off sometime after noon. He thought about that and realized it was already after noon.
He rolled over to the side and fingered the dirt. The brick buildings of the area had been pounded to a fine red clay that reminded him of home. And underneath? He sniffed at the ground for a moment, looked down the hill towards the river with his head sideways as if measuring the angle then flicked the cigarette over the crest of the hill and put his helmet on.
Cutprice hit the ground again as the thermal signature attracted a storm of fire. "Are you just communing with nature or do you have a plan?"
Mike held up one finger in a "wait a minute" gesture then rolled back over. "I have a plan," he intoned. "My mother would be proud; reading is finally going to save my ass."
"Reading what?" Sunday asked.
"Keith Laumer short stories."
Colonel Wagoner looked at the video in his heads-up-display in disbelief. "Pardon me, General. Would you mind repeating that?"
Horner was smiling. Which as practically everyone in the world knew at this point meant the fecal matter had really and truly hit the rotary air impeller. "You are to cross the Genesee River and go into direct support mode for the ACS and the Ten Thousand. They are pinned down on the ridge that parallels Mount Hope Avenue. Cross the river, climb the ridge and give them on call direct fire support."
"General," the colonel protested, thinking about all of the really bad aspects of that order, "you do realize that . . . well . . ."
He paused for a second to collect his thoughts. "Well, for one thing, the rounds aren't exactly howitzer rounds, General. If they do hit something they're going to make an atomic fireball about a quarter the size of the Hiroshima bomb; it's going to be noticeable on seismometers from here to Tibet. Second, they go for a looong ways; there's a couple of fortress cities out there. New York comes to mind. Last but not least, we're not a tank for all we look like one. We don't have any armor over our tracks or on the gun mantlet. In other words, we're vulnerable to Posleen fire. And if we sustain a critical ammunition hit you're going to have an explosion that makes the Shanghai Strike look like a firecracker and you'll lose everyone in the pocket. And most of the forces on this side of the river."
He waited for a moment as Horner appeared to be waiting for him to go on.
"Is that it?" Horner asked.
"Well, yes, sir."
"Okay. You forgot that without infantry support the Posleen would be able to close in on either side and attack you from underneath. Which, all things considered, really is your most vulnerable direction. You don't have anti-Posleen secondary weapons."
"Yes, sir," the colonel said. "You have a point there."
"Also that unless the Ten Thousand pulls back, you'll almost surely crush them in large numbers. And that moving you through the assaulting corps is not going to be what you would call easy."
"No, sir, it won't," the colonel admitted.
"You also missed the more significant aspect of your possible demise," the general continued inexorably. "If you sustain a critical ammunition hit, the resulting ground level explosion will be on the order of seventy kilotons. While this will, undoubtedly, kill Posleen for miles around, it will also create a very large crater. This crater, based upon the subsurface structure, will probably dam both the Genesee River and the Erie Canal. While the large area of marsh that will result will somewhat impede the Posleen, they will then have crossing points over both water structures. Just at the time when the local defense forces will probably be in full-scale rout to Buffalo."
The colonel suddenly recalled the tiny and almost forgotten datum that Horner's original education was engineering. "Ah. That's . . . not a point I had considered, sir."
"Colonel, listen very carefully," Horner said with a broad smile, speaking as if to a child. "Move your vehicle over to the Genesee Valley. Cross the river. Engage the Posleen in direct fire mode in support of the ACS on the ridge. Fire your weapons low. As often as possible, engage concentrations on hilltops that you can impact; if there are occasional detonations of your antimatter munitions this is an unfortunate side effect for which neither of us can be held responsible. As you move up, the Ten Thousand will shift left to cover that flank. The ACS will provide you with close infantry support. Use the slope of the ground for hull down fire; it is, I am told, almost perfect for it. Try not to hit New York City. Is this understood?"
"Yes, sir," the colonel said quietly. He was beginning to get the impression that this was not entirely the general's idea. And that the general was not particularly happy with it.
"And Colonel Wagoner."
"Yes, sir?"
"Don't get hit. Especially in your magazines."
"I'll try, sir. Sir? One question?"
"Yes?" Horner snapped.
"The Ten Thousand are getting out of my way. What about the ACS? What if we roll over one of them?"
Horner paused and for just a moment frowned slightly, a sign of amusement. "Colonel, have you ever watched the Coyote and Road Runner?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, if you run over an ACS, he'll just have to dig himself out. There's one over there painted like a green demon; you have my personal permission to show him why you call infantry 'crunchies.' "