Armored Tears (20 page)

"Yes,
ma'am."

"Well,
don't assume the pissers are all incompetent. Some are, and their politics
dominate their command structure, but seven years ago, I ran into plenty of
them where were all too competent. As for the drones, if I had to guess, I'd
say they didn't want to alert us. If we'd seen inbound drones, we'd have been
more ready. It might have saved us some losses."

"Colonel!
Colonel!" called Corporal Malan, her sensors operator, scrambling up out
of the tank and sliding down its sloped bow. "Colonel! There's a drone
inbound."

"Pretty
clever of this Captain Wilson to use a drone for communications," Younger
observed a few minutes later.

"Very
clever. And in a lot of trouble," Tara observed. "There's no way we
can get to him in time."

"Yeah,"
Younger agreed, "but Feldman could."

"We
can't talk to Feldman."

Younger
grinned. "Hah," he said. "I just figured out something the
famous Colonel 'Legs' missed."

"Spare
me, Younger," Tara said. "I'm not in the mood."

"Send
him a drone," he said, grinning down at her with his huge grin.

25.

 
The best way to proceed, Cal realized,
was to pretend that the tank was a simulator. As long as he kept telling
himself that he was in a simulator, he didn't have to think about the
severe-looking Armored Corps major and his tough-looking gunner riding above
and behind him in the turret, or about the looming, overwhelming bulk of the
tank itself. Climbing up and into the driver's hatch, he'd felt small and
fragile, as if the enormous armored mass of the tank were threatening to crush
and grind him out of existence. It was easier to deal with, though, once inside
the tank.

He
thought back to Reiko and the wild, crazy night that had left him too tired to
pass the Armored Corps simulator test. It seemed to be a memory that had
happened to someone else, a long time ago.

The
driver's compartment of the Type-51 Mk.IIIb wasn't exactly spacious, but it
wasn't impossibly cramped either, and the wide, high-resolution driver display
screens kept the compact space from being claustrophobic, despite the many tons
of armor that loomed above him, literally just overhead. The controls were not
overly complex and, thankfully, were laid out almost exactly like those in the
simulator had been. All in all, it wasn't too bad... though the strong smell of
disinfectant kept reminding him of the blood that had been cleaned out of this
compartment, and of the dead driver who had occupied it just a few hours ago.

The
War-Hammer had no shortage of power or turning ability, but it was still
seventy-five tons of metal on the move, so it wasn't exactly responsive. You
had to think through every maneuver, plan every acceleration and turn. On the
other hand, compared to an ATV train, it was like driving a motor-quad racer.

"Driver,
pass to the left of those outcroppings," came the major's snappish voice.
"Keep us at least half a kilometer clear of the rocks."

"Yes,
sir," Cal replied, and gently started to turn the tank. He'd jerked it a few
times at the very start, but really, he was finding that driving an actual War-Hammer
was in some ways easier than running a simulator had been. The feel of the
tank, the feel of the quad-tracks rolling over the terrain, the feel of the
enormous mass and momentum of it; they all sort of
talked
to you, Cal thought. And once you stopped feeling like the
mass of the tank's armor might crush you, being surrounded by almost
half-a-meter of composite-and-alloy armor tended to give you a sense of relaxed
security that meshed well with the deliberate, relaxed way you had to drive the
War-Hammer.

"You're
doing OK, driver," came the major's voice, which was almost enough of a
surprise to get Cal to jerk the controls; the first nice thing he'd heard the
major say.

"Ah,
yes, sir," Cal managed to answer.

***

Major
Feldman watched the display as his platoon cut across the landscape. No more
riding unbuttoned, he thought bitterly. No more stupid losses for his people.
The mission in front of him was a hard one, but worth doing. Somewhere out
there was the remains of a frame-infantry company, cut off, probably beset by
enemies. And he was going to go save them.

The
move was classic Tara O'Connor, he thought. Any other commander, faced with
unknown forces at her front, would be doing her best to consolidate and
concentrate her strength, pulling back a platoon she'd sent out. But not the
colonel. Instead, she'd ordered him to head
deeper
into what might now be enemy territory, to rescue an Infantry Crops company
that might already be dead.

Well,
she could order it. And he could do it.

"Sir,"
said the new sensors operator, a female ex-Auxiliary Corps private named Chattarji,
who claimed to have some sensors operation training. "I've got something
from the #2 drone. Looks light some sort of fighting. Tank gun fire,
maybe."

"Let's
see, Private," Feldman said. "Yup. That looks like long range tank
fire. Keep the drone high. I don't want to lose it to fragmentation from one of
those shots hitting the ground.
           

"OK,
people," he added, speaking into the platoon comm push, "we have a
direction and a target. Let's go!"

***

Bernie
ran, trying to keep each leg of her zigzag as random as possible. The gasping
sound of her own breathing filled her ears. A part of her mind recalled a line
from an old sci-fi book, about walking without rhythm to avoid being eaten by
giant sand-worms. Focus, Polawski, you stupid bitch, she thought. Keep running!

 
A dozen meters behind her an enemy tank
gun round punched into the ground, sending up a spray of dirt and stone
fragments.

The
UEN tanks that had been chasing the surviving 9th company framers had refrained
from using their main guns at first. At some point, though they had decided
that the sport of ultra-long range infantry sniping was a good enough use of
their ammunition.

The
tanks were sniping from over seven kilometers away, so each shot took a few
seconds to reach out to its target. Even better, there was a wind blowing,
kicking up a merciful haze of dust and sand; it probably messed with the tanks'
targeting, a bit. Except for that, Bernie thought, they'd probably all be dead
already. As it was, a framer running all-out, evading for all she was worth,
had a
chance
of dodging.

So,
it seemed, did an unarmored Earther reporter. The Australian must have been in
good condition, Bernie thought, to have kept running for this long. Without a
frame and the heavy armor which it allowed a framer to carry, any near miss
would kill the reporter. On the other hand, he had no power-pack to supply a
signature, however faint, for the enemy tanks to aim at. So far, he was still
alive, and so was she.

A
lot of the company weren't. Bernie had seen a shot land too close to
Chief-Sergeant Norton; massive fragments of pulverized stone had cut him down,
throwing his broken body aside like a discarded rag-doll, in spite of his
armor. Captain Wilson had simply disappeared after a shot struck next to him;
there one second and then utterly gone when the shower of debris had cleared.

Some
of her squad might still be alive, she thought, but she didn't have the breath
to speak into her comm.

A
round exploded in front of her, the blast hitting her as if she'd run into a
brick wall. Fragments slammed into the plates of her armor and she felt herself
fall. More fragments pelted her from above. She tried to roll back to her feet,
but she felt too dazed and weak to force herself back to her feet.

Out
ahead of her, something massive loomed out of the dust and haze. Bernie saw a
long main gun; thought, oh, shit, another tank. This was the end, she thought.
This is it. This sucks.

The
newcomer tank's main gun fired; the concussion felt like a slap even though
Bernie was a hundred meters away.

***

"Let's
go, people!" Major Feldman was shouting. "Get those framers aboard.
Get 'em on your tanks! Come on!"

There
were two enemy tanks out there. They had been sniping at the frame infantry,
like swatting flies with a hammer. Now they were shooting at the Armored Corps
tanks.

"Driver!
Reverse!" the major shouted, and Cal slammed the War-Hammer into reverse.

A
line of three explosions erupted in front of the tank as a salvo of UEN shots
missed. The inbound rounds were kinetic, but when they hit dirt or stone, the
violence of the blast was just as intense as if they'd been high explosive.

"Driver,
stop! Gunner, return fire!" Major Feldman ordered, and the 41 megajoule gun
thudded out a three shot burst.

The
War-Hammer fired a salvo of concealment grenades, enveloping everything in
smoke, and, hopefully, hiding itself from the UEN gunners.

"Come
on
, people!" the major shouted
again. "Get those infantry on board!"

"There's
wounded, sir," called Chattarji. "Some of the framers are hurt!"

Somehow,
Cal felt closer to Chattarji than to the other tankers; she'd been in the
Auxiliary Corps squad with him; now she was doing the job of sensors operator,
just like Cal was doing the driving.

Cal
could see what she meant. Framers were running up to the platoon's tanks,
climbing onto the turrets, hanging on for dear life. But some of the figures
looming out of the dust weren't running. Some were limping, or carrying their
comrades over their shoulders. Some looked like they were crawling.

Cal
saw the ATV mover pull up to a pair of framers, both moving as if wounded, one
helping another. In the smoke, he could only see a monochrome outline, but he
saw the mover's doors open as someone, maybe even Dave, jumped out to help the
two wounded framers aboard.

And
then the mover was gone, replaced by a cloud of dust and smoke, with a shower
of jagged fragments and spinning metal panels tumbling down around a burning
ruin of twisted metal.

"Shit!
Dave!" Cal shouted, in stunned horror.

"Keep
it tight, driver!" came the major's voice. "Get ready to move the
tank!"

"Yes,
sir," Cal managed to say, trying to get the image of the disintegrating
mover out of his mind.

"Alright,
driver," the major said a few moment later. "I think we've got all
that are left. Reverse the tank two hundred meters, then turn us around and
let's get out of here!"

"Yes,
sir!" Cal replied.

Suddenly
there was a shape blocking his vision screens, a man perched on the bow of the
tank, hammering at the driver's video sensors and waving frantically.

"What
the hell?" Cal exclaimed.

The
man wasn't a framer. He didn't even look like a soldier; no armor, no weapon,
civilian clothes. A civilian, Cal realized. And he was waving his arms and
pointing out ahead of the tank, into the wastes where enemy shots were still
falling.

"There's
a civilian on the tank, sir," Cal called into his intercom. "He's in
the way of my display sensors!"

"What?
Shit. Tell him to get back onto the turret and hold on!"

"Yes,
sir," Cal said.

How?
he thought a second later. He didn't know of there was any sort of external
speaker the driver could use, and even if there was one, he had no idea how to
get it to work.

Oh,
shit, he thought, and hit the hatch-open controls.

"She's
still out there!" screamed the civilian, as soon as Cal got his head out
of the open hatch. "I saw her fall! She wasn't hit! She's still out
there!"

"Who?!"
Cal shouted.

"Bernie!
Sergeant Polawski! A frame-trooper. She fell down just a few meters that
way!" the civilian screamed. "You've got to get her!"

"The
major just told me to reverse and get out of here!" Cal shouted.
"You're in the way of my video pickups! Get back on the turret and hold
on!"

"No!
Come on, we can grab her and bring her back!" the civilian shouted,
pulling at Cal. "Come on!"

"Fuck!"
Cal shouted as the man began to pull him out of the tank. "Shit! OK, come
on!"

The
two of them ran into the smoke and dust. An inbound round
craacked
past overhead, loud enough to hurt; the shockwave felt
like a slap. The thunder of the explosion as the round impacted on the stony
ground was lost in the ear-splitting
CRAACK
of one of the 41 megajoule guns behind them returning fire.

"Fuuuuck!!"
Cal screamed as he ran, enveloped by the roiling cloud of dust from the tank
gun's muzzle blast. At least he had his helmet and visor; the civilian's eyes
and ears were unprotected. How he was managing, Cal had no idea.

"Fuck!"
Cal shouted again.

"Here!"
the civilian was shouting, coughing and trying to wipe his eyes from the dust,
but also pulling at a figure half-buried in a jumble of dirt and stones. A
frame infantry trooper. "Come on! Help me get her!" the civilian
shouted.

Cal
ran up and the two of them began to drag the figure —a framer, a woman,
Cal realized, with a sergeant's stripes faintly outlined on the front of her
helmet— out of the debris.

"What
the fuck," the woman said, in a confused voice. "What?"

"Come
on, ma'am," Cal shouted. "Come on, Sergeant!"

"What's
going on?" the sergeant asked.

"We
need to get back to the tanks, Sergeant!" Cal shouted. "We need to
get out of here!"

"Tanks?
Our tanks? Where?!"

"That
way!" Cal shouted, pointing over his shoulder. "Let's go!"

"Right,"
the frame-trooper sergeant said, and suddenly picked up both Cal and the
civilian, each with one arm. "Let's go!" she said, taking off in a
lumbering run, the servos of her fame whining in protest.

The
tank wasn't where they'd left it. Smoke was still everywhere, and the dust
kicked up by tank guns firing and tank rounds hitting the ground. But there was
not even the shadow of the War-Hammer where it had been; just a trail of ripped
up ground left by its tracks.