A Hymn Before Battle

34 Andata Province, Diess IV 0821 GMT May 19th, 2002 ad

I think I should have waited to motivate them until now, Mike thought. Diess’ rising primary cast a fierce green fluorescence over the tableau on the roof. Fifty-eight sets of combat armor were planted at various distances from the edge of the roof, some of them slightly crouched as if trying not to face something. One was parked right on the edge. The roofs could be seen stretching in a continuous checkerboard from the inland mesas to the far green sea. In the extreme distance to the west Mike noticed some breaks and of course there was the missing set against the mesa, the fallen Qualtren and Qualtrev. Almost the length of a football field away was another megascraper roof at the same level.

“How far away is that megascraper, Sergeant Wiznowski?”

The NCO focused his range-finder crosshairs on the far wall and confirmed his rough guess. “Seventy-two and a hair meters, sir,” he answered, reading off his Heads-Up-Display.

“And do you happen to know the maximum jump range of a Warrior Combat Suit?”

“No, sir, sorry, sir.”

“Right, well it just so happens that the maximum jump range in the specifications we called for was one hundred meters for warriors, one twenty for scouts and one fifty for command.” Mike crouched and whispered an order. His suit rolled backward over the mile high drop and sprang outward. In apparent defiance of gravity it shot out and over in a back flip and landed neatly on the far roof. He then sprang back, landing with a thump in their midst.

“Sergeant Wiznowski, I want you to take a running jump to the other roof…”

“Uh, Mike, sir…”

“You can do it, Wiz. If I can, you can. Back up a couple of hops, take a running jump at it and as you jump, tell your suit to jump. Do it.” His visor faced that of the NCO, two blank surfaces, armor unreadable. He wondered what was going through the mind of the scout at that moment. Wiznowski had always been the consummate airborne NCO, brave to the point of suicide. Now he apparently was facing a challenge he was not fully prepared for. “Do you want me to jump again?”

“No sir, I’ll do it.” The tall suit backed up from the group and ran at the edge. There was total silence on the net as he reached the edge and whispered, “Jump.” Again, the suit soared upward in defiance of gravity and common sense. This time with his additional speed, far greater than an unarmored man, he soared far onto the roof, almost a hundred meters from the edge.

“That was a little excessive, Wiz. I said we spec’ed them for one hundred and twenty meters; it turned out to be a bit better than that.” Mike bounded farther into the roof to get a running start. He said, “Michelle, command run and maximum jump, execute.”

The legs of the suit began to blur. In the hundred meters from his position to the roof’s edge it accelerated to over one hundred kilometers per hour in a series of ground-devouring bounds. As the boots of the suit came in contact with the roof, a grappling field would engage to prevent slippage, therefore maximum energy was applied to each thrust. When he reached the roof’s edge the suit’s AID automatically launched him into the air. Under the combination of forward momentum, his inertial compensators’ contragravity function, and thrust from the inertialess thrusters built into the suit, he was carried over two hundred meters onto the far roof. With a return series of bounds he reached the edge of the roof and bounced effortlessly back to the platoon.

“Of course, this is a prototype command suit, not an issue one. Quite the thing, actually. But a suit can take a gap like this without breaking a sweat as you should all know. Powered suit drills is what your jobs are all about now; if you goons had ever been given proper training we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“We will move out in an extended watch formation, twenty meters between personnel, thirty meters between squads, scouts forward leaning left. If somebody misses the jump, the team falls out and recovers them using their winch system. If you miss the jump, don’t worry, your suit will automatically hit the anti-grav and your momentum will carry you to the face of the building. Use the universal clamp in your palm pad, clamp to the wall and wait for your buddies to recover you, or climb up hand over hand for that matter. The first rally point is the resupply rendezvous and we don’t need everybody there at first so if somebody misses, that troop’s team drops and only that team drops, everybody else drives the fuck on, is that clear?”

“Clear, sir.”

“If we take any fire from Posleen, those with weapons take them under fire. Kick their ass, don’t pee on ’em. Lay down all the fire you can and blow the fuckers away. We do not want to get held up on these rooftops without weapons.

“Now, just to get the feel for things, we’ll drop back and start moving forward across the roof as a platoon, not a cluster fuck, right?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Sergeant Green!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to take this at a long slow lope.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All-righty then, move out.” The platoon moved back, slowly, and the NCOs got it sorted out. With the men in position, Mike got his headquarters’ squad, effectively Sergeant Green and the engineers, in place, right rear, and hollered, “Move ’em out!”

The scout team started forward in long bounding strides and the platoon, spread over nearly a half kilometer, perforce bounded out behind them. As they neared the edge Mike consulted with Michelle.

All of the scouts took the jump without a hitch and when several of the regular troops, naturally, balked, the suits overrode them and jumped anyway. As they crossed the next building, still without opposition or even harassing fire, the troops began to get into the rhythm of the run. Runners all, as any soldier had to be in the modern airborne, the comforting rhythm of a light run was an anodyne to their nerves and the speed and distance involved a boost to their ego. Mike gave it a few more minutes then cranked on the tunes. Suddenly, from each troop’s AID, the Pat Benatar song “Legend of Billy Jean” started to play. “Benefits of not having to be tactical,” he commented to Sergeant Green.

As the kilometers passed with no Posleen in sight, the songs continued. Seventies rock, alternative, raker rock, turn fusion, heavy metal. Many of the songs emphasized the ephemeral nature of life and the importance of honor and courage, or at least resignation, in the face of inevitability. If the troops objected to the playlist there was no evidence, just a susurrant hush of breathing, each troop lost in his own thoughts. As they neared the rendezvous, a megascraper about three “blocks” or six kilometers from the encirclement, Mike cut onto the platoon push, breaking into a live version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

“Okay, hold it up in the middle of this next building, cigar perimeter, personnel with weapons on the outside,” he said, looking around the empty rooftop. “We’re supposed to be meeting our resupply here.”

“Mike,” said a puzzled Wiznowski on a side frequency, “what’s that?”

In the east, towards the distant line of human resistance, a fireworks display had suddenly erupted. “Michelle, enhance.”

Lines of fire were blasting upward from the break between two buildings. Hypervelocity missiles and other kinetic energy weapons along with lasers and lines of plasma reached up to the heavens. Suddenly the broken body of a combat shuttle, gloriously aflame, burst into sight above the intervening buildings. It was followed by six more, one twisting off, crippled, just as the shuttles reached the dubious safety of the air over the megascrapers. One crested too high and a plasma bolt that would do credit to a space cruiser slapped it out of the air. The fire penetrated its antimatter containment field and it exploded with the sun-bright flash of nuclear detonation, destroying the upper portions of the buildings to either side and forcing one of the other shuttles off course into a roof.

The platoon’s visual sensors automatically screened the optical overload. “Damn! There goes half our ammunition,” cursed Sergeant Green as the debris of the buildings crashed down all around.

“More likely a third,” contradicted Mike just as a half dozen Posleen God Kings in their saucer-shaped craft swooped upwards in pursuit of the shuttles. His mind slipped into razor sharp fugue, every detail diamond clear. “Platoon, down! Activate deception systems!”

As the suit careted the Posleen, Mike’s pistol locked onto them automatically. The God Kings were concentrating on the undefended shuttles and Mike’s first silvery burst swept two of them out of the sky from three kilometers away, one of the vehicles disappearing in actinic fire as the relativistic teardrops searched out its power supply. He hopped sideways and dropped as the remaining vehicles’ targeting systems slewed the God Kings’ weapons onto his location. A hurricane of fire swept his former position, but he took out another from his kneeling position. Two of the remaining Posleen went back to attacking the shuttles as one swept towards the platoon’s position.

The suits were doing a good job of mimicking the top of a building in every frequency so the Posleen thought there was a sole human to deal with. Mike missed the rapidly dodging craft with his next two shots and, in a series of wild jumps and somersaults, dodged three bursts of plasma, one of which cooked the external sensors on his right side. The Posleen was moving in at over three hundred kilometers per hour swerving crazily from side to side. Michelle tossed the suit to the side under thrusters as another burst of plasma passed through the space he had just occupied. Mike tumbled over onto his back and was trying to fire upward, an awkward position in a suit, when he was suddenly covered with the flaming wreckage of a God King’s saucer.

“Sucker figured he had you bagged, sir,” said Duncan, holstering the pistol borrowed for the sweep, “so he finally stopped flying all over the sky.”

“Thanks, Duncan,” said Mike, rolling to his feet. “Little too close, that one.”

“Just a little walk in the mornin’, sir.”

“Airborne. Anybody see where the other God Kings or our shuttles went?”

“Negatory, sir,” said Sergeant Green. “Nothin’ in sight.”

Two remaining shuttles suddenly popped up to the west, still relentlessly pursued by the God Kings. The personnel with pistols or captured Posleen weapons, having recovered from the shock of the attack, opened up on them. One more shuttle crashed after taking plasma fire but the God Kings were both dead moments later. The last shuttle banked towards the platoon’s location and nosed up to a landing in the center of their perimeter. Its back door dropped immediately.

“Okay, first squad, inside, grab what you need and then back out! Move it! Sergeant Green, handle the distribution, the shuttle should have an inventory.”

“Roger, sir,” the NCO headed for the drop-door as the first squad lined up for weapons.

“Posleen!” called one of the troopers on the perimeter. Sun bright nicks of ricochets began skipping off the shuttle’s armored skin. Mike looked seaward towards the source of the fire. A group of Posleen normals had gotten up onto the roof of the far building and were firing toward the shuttle and the platoon grouped around it.

“Spread it out!” He noted that first squad had hardly ducked getting to the shuttle. “Fire dammit!” He slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol and demonstrated, tumbling several of the distant horse-figures. The personnel with captured Posleen weapons began firing.

“I’m hit!” screamed one of the troops, followed by a bemused, “I thought I was hit.” He sat on the roof looking at his thigh. “Am I hit?”

“You’re hit,” said Mike, belatedly falling to a prone position. “Everybody get down, dammit. Don’t sweat it, your suit will take care of it.”

“Second squad!” bellowed Sergeant Green.

“Fire from the west!”

“God Kings from inland!”

“Expedite this, Sergeant Green! First squad, concentrate on the God Kings!” Suddenly one of the second squad suits headed towards the shuttle began doing its death dance. As the suit tumbled it knocked aside others in the squad. They started to try to catch the suit, but it suddenly stopped and was still.

As they began to open the suit, Mike snapped, “Do not pop his suit! In case some of you have never seen that, Private Laski is not recoverable. Sergeant Green?!” Mike opened fire on the approaching God Kings.

“Third squad!” Sergeant Green bellowed, by way of answer.

Wiznowski suddenly bounded out of the shuttle and off to the west; Mike had hardly noticed him fall back to it. The lighter and faster scout began firing at the approaching God Kings with an HVM launcher. He moved around the rooftop like a hyperactive flea. The fire of the four new God Kings angled in on him as he ran, stopped, jumped and dodged to avoid it. From time to time he would stop just long enough to fire off a hypervelocity missile.

“Wiz! Dammit, quit trying to be a hero!” Mike shouted, triggering another burst while bounding forward in support. “Get your ass back here!”

“If you wanna dance, sir…” the scout panted and was washed away by a God King HVM.

“Wizzz!” Mike screamed and leaped to his feet.

“Fuckers!” He reloaded and started running towards the God Kings. “Michelle, evade pattern Gamma, maximum run, broken field automatic, execute!” Now all he had to do was reload and fire and he slammed in magazine after magazine as he closed on first four and then three and then two saucers. The God Kings’ fire flailed around him uselessly as they closed the distance.

The suit dodged in a random zigzag pattern as he maintained constant positive traction through the suit boots, the occasional hit by a railgun round shedding like water. A hundred meters out a laser briefly washed his suit, but with the exception of frying a set of sensors, it was not in contact long enough to do more than raise his temperature.

He closed the final distance to the last God Kings at an oblique as their saucers slewed, trying to track the frenetically dodging combat suit. Like a weasel Mike leapt on the offside saucer and, taking the God King’s head in his gauntlet while planting his boot on its shoulder, ripped the sauroid head off clean. At that the other God King swung his saucer around to run but Mike flipped the palmate blade off his back and hurled it entirely through its thorax with all the rage in the world.

Then he bounced over and whacked the other God King’s head off. He stepped down off the faltering saucer and collected both heads. Tossing them a distance away, he drew his pistol.

A burst of fire into the energy pack of the nearest saucer devoured the vehicle in a shattering explosion. He rode out the explosion as if it were an epiphany, staring into the fire like a soul in hell. There was no danger; the suits could shrug off any explosion short of the sort of cataclysm that struck Qualtren. And even then they could give it a run for its money.

He next turned his scorched pistol on the far God King’s vehicle, devouring it as well. Then he kicked the vehicles over one by one, pulling all the pieces of the God Kings he could find out of the wreckage. He made a pile, hopped up and down on it until it was flat, piled it back up and put an antimatter grenade in the resulting mass.

He set the timer, stepped back and watched the last remnants of the two God Kings blown sky high. Then he picked up the nearest saucer and hammered it into the roof until the roof was massively holed and the saucer was junk. His rage sated, he picked up the two heads by their crests and flew his suit back to the platoon.

By the time he returned the other fire had slackened. Those had been the only God Kings so far in contact and the normals were ineffective except in overwhelming numbers. He thrust the fresh heads at the first trooper he encountered.

“Go put these on Sergeant Wiznowski’s smear,” Mike snarled. The paratrooper hurried to obey.

“I swear before all the gods,” he said to himself, but Michelle faithfully broadcast it, “that samadh will grow beyond all measure.”

He stared off toward the ocean, without thoughts, avoiding recent memories. Immured in his armor, he had killed soldiers under his command in numbers beyond count, but every one of those was a mere electronic chimera. For the first time he had lost actual human beings, living breathing entities with whom he had established a bond.

The sudden intrusion of reality into his highly developed notional world of bloodless combat was momentarily stupefying. He shuddered in his armor, conscious for perhaps the first time that these were not shadows on the wall of some electronic cave, but people who had hopes and dreams. These were people whose mothers carried them for nine long months, the trail of their lives leading to a barren rooftop under a sun not their own.

As the platoon consolidated and checked equipment, he stared off into the distance in a moment snatched from eternity, infinite and finite. Unnoticed, one of the engineers connected new auto-grenade launchers and filled his magazines. Finally Sergeant Green broke into his reverie.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Sergeant Green.”

“We’re ready to move out.”

“Thank you.” Duncan handed him a rifle. Mike checked the magazine then checked that his store was still in place. He noticed he was still staring off into the distance. He was loath to move.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Sergeant Duncan.”

“We need to move out.”

“Yes, I suppose we do.” He still hesitated. Something vital was missing, the drive that usually carried him through the tough times. If they hit a tough spot without it, it might mean all their lives down the toilet. He hunted around for it, but the house in his soul where it lived seemed to be empty. That particular mask was in hiding.

“Michelle,” he said wearily, “download coordinates of all destruction points.

“Platoon, mission order.” O’Neal’s voice was an emotionless monotone. The team might have been taking their commands from a non-AID computer. “Consolidated platoon, second battalion three twenty-fifth infantry battalion will perform a covert insertion of the megascrapers Daltren, Arten, and Artal. The platoon will separate into designated two- and three-man teams. Each team has a series of points that they either will directly destroy or lay charges upon.

“Once all the charges are laid and all the primary points are destroyed, the unit will pull out of the buildings then destroy them.” As he spoke the troopers drew in around him. The action was tactically unsound: one lucky burst by a God King laser could have gotten them all. But the platoon was reacting to the deaths of their fellows much as Mike was and each of the soldiers felt a need to feel part of a group, a need for touch and feeling. The suits created a strong emotion of alienation through their control of every sense. Moments like this were a slice of humanity bitten on the run.

“Subject megascrapers should drop in an L shape leading from the ocean and curving around the trapped units. That will leave those units free to concentrate on pushing out of the encirclement towards the friendly lines. This is the good part, people: the major mass of Posleen on this whole damn continent is in the group trying to pry the Deuxième and the Lancers out of those buildings, so when we drop those buildings on them the war is half done.” He paused and there was a tired but heartfelt “Hoo-wah” to that. The clustering of the platoon was sounding a warning to him, but he was beyond caring. The flip side was that the same clustering was beginning to act upon him, beginning to bring him out of his fugue. Even with all his time in suits, he was as susceptible as the troopers to the sense of alienation.

“We are going to be operating in two-man teams. If you run into any Posleen you can’t handle, break contact and call for support. Headquarters will support third squad and the engineers in the ‘L’ building. The engineers will work on that building ’cause it needs a lighter touch. One team from each squad will stay in support and as the other teams get finished they will go into a support role and be tasked as needed.” He looked over at the gathered scouts and felt a stab of grief at the lack of a tall lanky suit in their midst.

“Scouts, your job is to emplace some charges, but mainly I want you to launch flicker-eyes across the unmined buildings. You should be above the line of fire but if the Posleen notice you you’ll be in for a hot time tonight. After the charges are all laid, head towards the ocean-side processing plants through the water lines.”

He paused in his flat monotone delivery and looked around, the slight twitches of his neck muscles swinging the viewpoint from side to side. The suits were featureless as always; the platoon might have been a set of poorly cast plasteel statues. A sudden question intruded upon his narrowed reality as he wondered how many would be alive on the morrow.

“Because of all the damage the lines are mostly empty; if yours isn’t, blow out the walls and drain it; according to my data, none of the water plants are functional in this area.

“We’re about to start moving over to our respective buildings. We don’t have time to dick around so we’re going down the outside on compensators. Your AIDs have the drop programs loaded. Fall fast then punch up the compensators and hit hard. It’ll be just like a jump except we’ll fall faster and won’t disperse. When we hit the ground, split up and do the mission.” He looked around the rooftop then back at the gathered platoon.

He was not sure what to say. It seemed a moment for a motivational speech but he was damned if there was one in him. “A quick prayer,” he said finally and bowed his head. He paused for a moment longer, running through the short list of prayers he could remember. None of them seemed appropriate. Then, suddenly, a fragment of verse from an unknown poem came to mind. He thought about it and found it highly appropriate. He took a deep breath.

“Sergeant Green!”

“Sir?”

“Move ’em out.”

“Yes, sir. Scouts, Second, First, Fourth, Third, Headquarters, Fifth. Move it!”

When they reached the first building to be mined, the squads broke up and moved to their buildings. Third squad, tasked to this building, waited lined along the roof with headquarters for the other squads to get into position. When the other squads were in position, the platoon stepped over the edge. The suits dropped under an artificially induced two positive gravities to within one hundred meters of the ground then began to slow. They hit the bottom still traveling at nearly six meters per second, but the suits absorbed this with bent knees. There were a few Posleen milling aimlessly on the boulevards.

“Squads, put a covering team behind you and head to the demolition points. Third, Sergeant Green and I will cover. Do it, people.” Mike hefted his grav-rifle and followed the red priority carets. Michelle could analyze all the Posleen in line of sight or range of sensors and determine the highest priorities of fire. Take out the ones with heavy weapons first, moving outward from nearest to farthest, unless ones farther out were targeting Mike and nearer ones were not. Mike followed the flashing carets listlessly; the moment of rage at Sergeant Wiznowski’s death had destroyed something important for him and he could feel depression lingering around the corner.

Posleen fell relentlessly, but Mike was becoming more distant. It felt as if he was watching the world through TV and the actions in the beyond were unreal shadows.

He and Sergeant Green covered the entry of Third squad and moved into the building.

“How are we gonna support from here?” asked Sergeant Green standing in one of the giant vehicle bays on the ground floor.

“Poorly. We’ll move toward the central shaft and down.” Mike and Sergeant Green headed inward, mopping up the occasional Posleen along the way. When they did not notice the Posleen, the Posleen nonetheless attacked them. Mike finally determined that most of the Posleen in the building were ones that had been released by the death of a God King. Mike considered the briefings he had, a million years ago back in The World.

Normal Posleen were barely sentient. Most of them were below moron level on a human scale. There were a few that were of slightly higher intelligence that the God Kings used as foremen or NCOs. But all of the normal Posleen “normals” and “superior normals” were bonded in a very real sense to an individual God King. They would not even flinch from death if the God King ordered them to die.

But if the God King died, their bonds were released. If this occurred with another God King around, the other God King could try to rebond them. Rebond them “in the heat” as it was called. However, if they were not rebonded in the short period after the death of their lord and master, they were impossible to bond for some time thereafter, up to two weeks. Then they would begin looking for another God King. He mentioned that to Sergeant Green.

“Must make things interesting for a couple of weeks after the battle, sir.”

“Why?” Mike asked in a disinterested tone.

“Well, sir,” said Sergeant Green, hoping to reawaken the lieutenant’s interest in the proceedings, “these things have always attacked us on sight, and I’ve noticed a bunch of them that are recently dead.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too.”

“I think they attack their own kind, too, sir. So the area behind a battlefield has to be littered with these things, all looking for a fight, for a couple of weeks. Makes it hard to consolidate, yah know?”

“No secure rear,” said Mike, with the beginnings of interest. The lethargic depression from losing Wiznowski was still around the corner, but his basic instinct to continue the battle was beginning to fight it off.

“Yes, sir. Not if there’s been a battle, one where a bunch of God Kings got killed. Those God Kings that took off after the shuttles, what do you want to bet their group mutinied, or whatever, after they left?”

“Except for the ones that got rebonded in the heat,” Mike pointed out.

“Yes, sir, but look at all the ones around here. They must miss a lot.”

“How do we use that?” Mike mused.

“Beats me, sir, but it’s got to work for us. They have to move supplies, ‘an army travels on its stomach’ right? So, it’s got to affect their logistics.”

“Not really, most of their logistics is pickup.” About then they were called to help out a team that had run into a group under the leadership of a God King. After a hairy few minutes with no casualties to the humans they were back in their conversation.

“What did you mean about their logistics, sir?”

“You mean pickup?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, they survive much the same way an army has survived throughout history, by gleaning. Until fairly recently in history what we now call looting and punish people for was the accepted way that troops fed and paid themselves. Have you noticed anything about these Posleen?”

“Besides the fact that they’re shooting at us, sir?” joked the sergeant.

“I meant the stuff on their harnesses,” Mike answered with a slight smile.

Sergeant Green studied the nearest Posleen corpse.

“They’ve got bits stuck all over them, sir.”

“Yeah, shiny bits. If you dug through the ruck you’d find a few with silver or gold. More high-quality stuff on the God Kings. In their pouches are going to be bits of Indowy and other plant and animal matter. Some of the Indowy is moved back to the landers, ammunition presumably moves forward. The indigenous population and supplies are their food and they gather semivaluable and valuable materials for their bosses. In the consolidation period following conquest they build sort of temple palaces to the God Kings and fill them with the loot they gathered. I guess they’re like a lot of soldiers. You know what Kipling says: ‘It’s loot, loot, loot that makes the boys get up and shoot.’ But that can’t be their only motivation.” Can it?