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  "Sir? I mean, conflict of interest? And gifts from contractors? I know there are Army regulations, sir." She finished with a moue of distaste. He was the commander and could have any filthy habit he wanted to have. But he could at least have the decency to keep it private. Her former unit had a zero-tolerance tobacco policy.

  "There aren't any in the Federation laws, Lieutenant. None at all," said the Indowy Master. "We checked quite carefully, and it is entirely within the agreed-upon structure for the Federation Armed Forces remuneration process. Also, since it is a necessary piece of equipment for the captain's function, it is not taxed."

  "Oh." The group of officers and NCOs shared looks. The Indowy had just handed their captain nearly half a billion credits worth of suit, untaxed. In perspective, an Indowy junior craftsman earned less than five credits a month.

  "Again, my thanks," Mike said to the Indowy.

  "It is little. My team will be staying to fit your clan. I guarantee you the best fitting possible."

  "Why don't you come inside out of the dust and we can talk," said Mike, gesturing towards the headquarters. "There are a few things I've been hoping to talk to a good technician about."

  "Thank you. And my team?"

  "Top," O'Neal said.

  "Right you are, sir. Beds for the Indowy, coming right up. I think a trailer to themselves?"

  "Reading my mind again, Top."

  "Yes, sir," said the darkly tanned mountain with a smile. "That and training is what NCOs is for."

  CHAPTER 9

  Rabun County, GA, United States 0f America, Sol III

  1023 EDT June 17th, 2004 ad

  "Okay, honey, now turn the cam a quarter twist, carefully, while making sure the pin don't come out."

  "Like this?" asked Cally, her forehead wrinkling in concentration.

  "Just right. Now, can you feel any resistance to the pin?" asked Papa O'Neal, watching the exercise from the shade of a tree. The heat of Georgia's summer enveloped them here at the edge of the fields and every little scrap of shade was appreciated. He worked the massive wad of Redman in one cheek then moved it to the other side.

  "No," she said, licking a drop of sweat off her lip. "There's no resistance at all," she confirmed, barely moving the cotter pin.

  "Okay, pull it out, carefully. Don't move the trip wire and for dang sure if you feel any resistance, stop."

  Cally was taking to demolitions like a duck to water. She had incredible hand-eye coordination for an eight-year-old, and took infinite pains. It only took Papa O'Neal blowing up one cow for her to decide she wanted to be real careful. This was the most advanced technique yet: a claymore directional mine on a trip wire, with the trip wire booby-trapped. Okay, so it was not a real claymore, yet. It was, however, a real blasting cap.

  "Okay," he said, continuing the lesson, "so you're walking along a trail . . ."

  "No, I'm not, 'cause trail is spelled D-E-A . . . T-H . . . uh . . . T-R-A-P," she contradicted.

  "Okay, you're having a bad day."

  " 'Pay more attention if you're having a bad day, you make more mistakes, not less,' " she recited pedantically.

  "Okay, your target is walking along a trail," said O'Neal with a shake of his head. He took a pull from the Gatorade at his side and nodded at her canteen.

  "Posleen or human?" she asked, taking a large swig of water. Papa O'Neal's house had the best water in the entire world.

  "Well, human this time."

  "Okay," she agreed with equanimity. Humans were generally smarter than Posleen according to both Papa O'Neal and her daddy, who ought to know. If you trained to kill humans you were bound to be better at killing Posleen.

  "And he's smart . . ." continued Mike Senior, turning slightly to the side to spit. The stream of brown juice nailed a grasshopper as it slumbered on a grass stem.

  "No, he's not," she disagreed, putting away her canteen. "He's on a trail."

  "Sometimes you gotta use the trails," said Papa O'Neal.

  "Not me, I'm in the trees."

  "Okay, a target is walking along the trail, a not-very-smart human target."

  "Okay," she agreed.

  "And he's smart enough to be looking for trip wires."

  "Dogs?"

  "Feelers."

  "Okay."

  "And he spots the trip wire . . ."

  "Feels."

  "Right. And what does he do?

  "Not-very-smart?"

  "Right."

  " 'Always assume your target is smarter than you.' "

  "Would you stop throwing my statements back in my face and go with the exercise!" He worked the Redman back over to the other side and spat again. A beetle started to burrow, thinking it was raining.

  "Okay," she agreed. If that was how he wanted to do it, fine.

  "Okay, what does mister not-so-smart do?"

  "Cuts the wire."

  "Go ahead."

  "No way!" she disagreed. "You cut the wire. I'm not taking your word on that being a practice claymore!"

  "Okay, pull the blasting cap, then cut the wire."

  "Okay." She crept over to the camouflaged claymore, sweeping carefully ahead of her with a long piece of grass; you never knew when Papa O'Neal was going to booby-trap his exercises. Then, with a glance over her shoulder to make certain that Grandpa was not going to mess with the detonator, she pulled the blasting cap out.

  There was a series of sharp retorts behind her as the training claymores that were hooked to the booby trap on the blasting cap went off in a daisy chain sequence. If all of the claymores had been real, a hundred-meter swath of the edge of the fields would have erupted in fire.

  "And the moral of today's lesson?" asked Papa O'Neal dryly. The wad of chewing tobacco distended his grin.

  "You are an obnoxious prick, Grandpa!" she retorted.

  "And I'm teaching you bad language."

  "Hey!" she shouted indignantly, holding up the blasting cap. "This isn't even real!"

  "Like I'm going to let you handle a live cap hooked to a trip wire," said the old man. "Get real. I promised to return you in one piece."

  "You pull caps all the time," she said, puzzled.

  "Not once I've set an antitamper device on it. If I can't blow it in place, I go around. Handling live traps is for fools and damn fools. Which kind are you?"

  "Oh, okay. Enough demo for today?"

  "Enough for today, except I want you to repeat after me. I will not . . ."

  "I will not . . ."

  "Attempt to disable . . . " Spit.

  "Attempt to disable . . ."

  "Any demo . . ."

  "Any demo . . ."

  "So help me, God."

  "So help me, God."

  "Amen." Spit.

  "Amen."

  "Let's go bust some caps," he said with a smile. Cally was good at demo but shooting pistols was her real love.

  "Okay, but I want a five-point handicap this time," she said, checking the Walther in the skeleton holster at her back.

  "No way. I'm getting old, my hands are all palsied," he quavered, holding out a shaking left hand. "I think I should have a handicap."

  "You do have a handicap, Grandpa; you're getting senile. Remember last week? Fourteen points ahead on the twenty-meter range? You know what they say: short-term memory . . ."

  "Are you sure you're eight?" he asked. A moment later an ant was smashed to its knees by a descending mass of mucus and vegetable matter. After a moment it shook its head and looked around in ant wonder at the largess from the sky.

  CHAPTER 10

  For heathen heart that puts her trust

  In reeking tube and iron shard,

  All valiant dust that builds on dust,

  And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

  For frantic boast and foolish word—

  Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

  —"Recessional"

  Rudyard Kipling, 1897

  Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA, United States of America, Sol III

 
2237 EDT July 28th, 2004 ad

  Stewart's second squad sprinted forward and dropped to the prone, their grav-guns tracking and firing on the advancing virtual Posleen the whole time. Wherever the silver beams of relativistic-velocity teardrops intersected the Posleen wall, racking explosions tore deep gaps in the oncoming line. In response, hypervelocity flechettes and missiles tore at the defenders' armor, most of the hipshot rounds missing high. But with millions of penetrator rounds coming at the relatively few suits, losses were a statistical certainty.

  "Ten–twenty-two, ten–twenty-two, execute!" Stewart said in a steady voice as Private Simmons's data lead went blank. Half the team checked fire just long enough to reach into a side compartment and pull out a small ball. Flicking off the cover and thumbing the switch they set it offset to their right and went back to firing.

  "Clear Ten–Alpha," said the Alpha team leader as Bravo team duplicated the maneuver.

  As Bravo resumed firing, the cratering charges emplaced by the Alpha team went off. They again checked fire only long enough to slither into the impromptu foxholes, then took the Posleen back under fire. "Clear Twenty-Two–Alpha," called the team leader.

  Moments later the entire platoon was under cover.

  * * *

  "So that's your playbook," said Colonel Hanson.

  "Yes, sir," said O'Neal, watching Second platoon perform an advance under fire. The hasty defense presented by second squad was temporarily impregnable to the Posleen who were advancing on a narrow strip between a ridge and the Manada River, a much larger body of water than reality for the purposes of the exercise. "We've got about two hundred plays, so far, with the various levels of the company trained in their own actions under each play. It's more or less analogous to the bugle calls the cavalry used. In this case, the squads are performing a Ten–Twenty-Two, 'form hasty fighting positions and take cover.' Not that it will help them for long on this exercise." He worked a bit of dip and spat it into a pocket in the biotic underlayer of the all-enveloping helmet. The saliva and tobacco products were rapidly ingested by the system like all wastes. To the underlayer it was all grist for the mill.

  "Is this a fair test?" asked Colonel Hanson, noting how Second platoon was dissolving as inexorably as rock candy in hot water. He wished he could have a cigarette, but they were a bitch to smoke in the suits.

  "I think so. By the time Nightingale noticed the flanking maneuver, it was nearly too late for Second to establish the optimum conditions, which was for the Posleen to be a hundred meters farther up river. There the chokepoint is only thirty meters wide, and Lieutenant Fallon could have held them indefinitely. As it is, I don't think they'll make it."

  "What would you do?"

  "I'd probably try a charge, maybe with some psychological refinements, and try to push them back to the chokepoint," said O'Neal. He swiveled his viewpoint down into the river for a moment then back to the fighting. "It's really not a time thing; the length of time they hold is moot. If the Posleen break through now or three hours from now they'll crack the company defense down the river."

  "Would it work?" asked Colonel Hanson, now paying much more attention to the briefer than the essentially finished engagement.

  "According to the scenario, it will work on an irregular basis, dependent on a number of factors not available to adjustment by the tested," O'Neal answered precisely. Whether any of it would work in the real world was the question in his mind. Every time he looked back at Diess he got cold chills. The chances he had taken were insane. Every single action had been long-ball odds and only incredible good luck had carried the platoon through. His own survival was still placed, by everyone, in the "miraculous" category. And he was afraid he'd used up not only his own quota of luck, but his company's. If these plans were wrong, it was going to be a massacre. And the fault would rest squarely on his shoulders.

  He worked the dip around in thought and spat again. "The Posleen might have a wimpy God King, they might not have enough muscle to the front, minute factors of surface structure on the squad's armor affects penetration, and so forth. But if you're this far back you have to hammer them like the hinges of hell, and Lieutenant Fallon's not a hinges-of-hell kind of guy."

  "So the mistake on Lieutenant Nightingale's part was farther back?"

  "Yes, sir," Mike answered, in a distracted tone. Something about the scenario was playing false to his experienced senses.

  "I almost always leave First platoon in reserve, which pisses the other two platoons off," he continued automatically. "But Rogers always goes around with such a head full of steam, when I use him to reinforce or blitz it gets hammered home with a vengeance."

  The First platoon leader was a tall, broad, good-looking first lieutenant. As a first lieutenant he would normally have either a heavy weapons platoon or a staff position. Filling a slot for a second lieutenant was beginning to eat him alive; Mike had forwarded four requests for transfer in the last six months.

  "Nightingale believes in distributing the load. I am trying to disabuse her of that. The only thing that matters is the mission. You have to pick your units on that basis, not on the basis of 'fair.' I finally decided that what she needed was more of a helping hand. But I'd backed myself into a corner being overcorrective." He grimaced at admitting the mistake.

  "Finally I took over most of the stuff the first sergeant had been handling for both of us and sicced him on her. They've been spending a hell of a lot of time together and she's starting to get the hang of it; Gunny Pappas is a top-notch trainer. But I'm still not totally comfortable with her tactical sense."

  "It takes time to learn that," Hanson admitted.

  "Yes, sir. And I hope we've got it." Mike kicked up a probability graph of the engagement if it continued on the current course and fed it to the battalion commander. The casualty graph looked like a mountainside.

  For Hanson, who came to his military maturity in the cauldron of Southeast Asia and the Army of the '70s, the Virtual Reality gear the unit trained with was the next best thing to science fiction.

  He had been nearly seventy when recalled and although he had continued in business after the Army, he was one of those executives for whom computers were Greek. These systems, however, were as far from modern computers as a Ferrari from a chariot.

  Taking his lead from the resident expert, he started calling his artificial intelligence device, a Galactic-supplied supercomputer the size of a pack of cigarettes, "Little Nag." He now used her for all his official correspondence and, now that he had gotten her over the annoying literalness of a new AID, she was better than any secretary he'd ever had. In the regular exercises the battalion was conducting, Little Nag kept better track of friendly and enemy disposition, personnel and equipment levels, and all the other minutiae that made for a successful military operation, than any staff in history. The newly arrived S-3 and the other battalion staff officers were getting used to their own AIDs and the staff was approaching a level of perfection seldom to be dreamed.

  There was a rapid shuffling below as second squad left their positions and the others moved to cover the extended front. The reduced fire pressure permitted the Posleen to begin moving slowly forward, piling up windrows of their dead but willing to take the sacrifice to overrun the position. However, what remained of second squad eeled past the other positions and, using a gully that kept them more or less out of Posleen sight, slipped one by one into the river and out of Virtual sight.

  "Oh, God damn," whispered Mike, cutting in an overlay of positions to track second as they moved up current. He smiled and spit into the vacuole again.

  "What?" asked Colonel Hanson. "It looks like a forlorn hope to me." He tapped a series of virtual controls to project the course of the unit. The leader, the Sergeant Stewart he had met his first day at the unit, had entered orders for his team and the group of eight survivors was headed for a point in the river opposite the narrow chokepoint the platoon had been unable to reach.

  "Not necessarily, sir. Even with the
few that remain, second squad could take and hold that chokepoint for a moment, given the right conditions. Maybe long enough for the rest of the platoon to charge forward and relieve them. Damn, I didn't think that by-the-book Long-Grey-Line son of a gun had it in him."

  Mike watched as the squad formed under the cover of the green waters then erupted upward. As they moved, the water began to hump and wriggle as if infested by snakes. What surfaced was not a group of suits, but a swarming mass of worms, each gray body surmounted with a fang-filled maw. As lines of silver explosive lightning flicked God Kings out of existence, the worms snatched Posleen from the banks and dragged them screaming into the suddenly yellow-stained water. The air, at the same time, was filled with an evil caterwaul and the thunder of drums.

  "Is that what I think it is?" asked Colonel Hanson. His own half-smile was unseen. The flair of their company commander was obviously rubbing off on some of the members of the company. O'Neal's own use of music in battle had become legendary almost overnight.

  "If you think that's the Seventy-Eighth Fraser Highlanders' bagpipes slamming out 'Cumha na Cloinne' it is. Stewart's been listening to my CDs again."

  "Your idea?"

  "No, sir, but now I know what infested Lieutenant Fallon's mind. That would be Sergeant Stewart." The smile of the company commander was hidden by the faceless armor but the battalion commander could clearly hear it in his voice. "You remember him, sir."

  "Mmm," was the only comment. The battalion commander had recently returned a request from the Ground Force Criminal Investigation Division for an investigation into various items of equipment that had gone missing around post. His basis was insufficient evidence of it being traced to Bravo Company. In fact, he was fairly certain that the diminutive second squad leader was responsible.

  "You know," the battalion commander commented. "Bravo had a fairly shabby reputation before you took over. You might want to ensure that it doesn't get one again."

  Mike's abbreviated nod was unseen. Prior to the nearly simultaneous arrival of First Sergeant Pappas and Lieutenant Arnold, the company had been a center for black marketeering at the post. The easy and unquestioned availability of technology that was centuries ahead of current had created a tremendous profit for the former first sergeant. Stewart and his squad of recent basic trainees, along with the first sergeant and Arnold, had been instrumental in cleaning up the situation. The former first sergeant was now serving time in the Fleet military prison on Titan Base. The prisoners were used for work out in the vacuum that was considered particularly hazardous.