Grendels (2 page)

Overhead the sky flashes bright white light followed by the crash of thunder.  Through the open rear bay door Sanders watches the air support being blasted out of the sky by the advanced weaponry controlling the airspace over the entire planet. 

His GPS hand terminal shows another two miles before they reach the DZ.  Flaring to life in a ball of fire the drop ship to his right ignites and tears apart, engines pulling free from their mounts and screaming off into the night.  Burning alive, several soldiers fling themselves from the transport to fall almost a mile to their death.

“Thirty seconds!” the pilot roars into the headset.

“If we make it that long,” Sanders murmurs too low to be heard over the wail of the engines and props.

Below on the ground assault troops pour wave after wave into the defensive lines stretching out as far as the eye could see.  Still in the sky to his left are the two Russian teams for the attack.

One of the other soldiers from Kinetic Solutions had said that the Russians had implemented new implants and sub-dermal armor.

“Sub-dermal armor plates would be nice against those damn flechette rounds,” Sanders again mumbles to no one in particular.

“Ten!”

The pilot counts down to one, Sanders leaps out of the back of the helicopter throwing the drag chute into the air.  The chute snaps open jerking him clear of the
drop ship before pulling Davis out as well.  In seconds the entire platoon bounces across the rough ground acting as a makeshift drop zone. 

“Sitrep!” Sanders barks into the radio.

Each of the soldiers checks in with a green status on the grid on his forearm screen.

“Fall in on me!”

The screen shows each of the green dots navigating towards his own flashing blue icon.  Waiting for the soldiers to gather around he checks the overhead sat view for any available air support.

The airspace looks vacant.  Even the chopper that dumped them off seems to have been downed leaving them stranded with no air support or any hope of resupply.

“Damn,” he whispers to himself and clicks his radio back on.  “Alright, here’s the objective,” he spreads the screen wrapped around his forearm and keys in the rally points.  “Timetable has us reaching that transport within the hour.  It's just three miles, but intel says it's going to be hell.”

Zooming the screen out, “These are Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo companies.  They will be pushing South or East, respectively, into the target.  Command doesn’t hold out much hope for our approach so they only sent a single platoon with a few augmentees.”

Sanders counts the twenty soldiers and shakes his head, unseen in the dark of early morning.

Davis starts up, “Alright Allen, Thompson, Miller, Stevens, Steele you’re with me.  We are going to provide advance recon for the rest of the team.  Anything like heavy weaponry that’s going to slow you down, leave it here.”

Allen and Thompson download their packs unstrapping the LAW-5s strapped to either side of their bags.  Davis unclips the belt of grenades strapped around his waist passing them to Sanders.  “Good luck,” Davis says and flips a half salute.

Sanders grins and tosses back the same jacked up salute.

“Alright Tex and Cooper you’re on overwatch.  How you’re going to find and keep high ground while we try and stay on the move that much, I don’t have any clue.  Just give me what you got.  Everybody else form up on me.  Spread, not too thin and not too close.”

Sanders waits for Davis to clear sixty yards out in front at a trot before rising slightly from his crouch and running forward with the rest of the unit spread in a delta in tow.  With the main company advancing East Cooper and Tex angle
north to follow a slight ridge into some wooded cover.  Half the advance unit disappears into the woods with the rest flanking around the edge.

Cautiously checking the forearm screen every few seconds Sanders waits for the inevitable. 

Since the first engagement, a crucified defense, Sanders had known the enemy would appear suddenly with overwhelming firepower.  The GPS overlay would show several pieces of information that would become invaluable.  The first data point would be the soldier's actual status.  If the blood pressure, pulse, and thermometer cuff spiked abnormally the icon would automatically shift from green to yellow.  The soldier can also trigger this manually.  The sensor suit also connects to the soldier's firearm.  As soon as the trigger engages the circle converts to a five point star.  After twenty seconds it changes to a square and after forty seconds it goes to a triangle.  The triangle switches back to a circle after a full two minutes since the trigger engages.  If the soldier fires more than three shots the star begins to rotate indicating continuous fire.  If no rounds are fired for more than ten seconds or the rate of fire drops below thirty rounds a minute the star stops rotating.  A red icon means the soldier is requesting backup.  This icon always populates a cross either red, blue, or green. 

Tactical overlay data only feeds to the unit commander because the army brass decided it might be overwhelming for the average soldier to know just exactly what was going on around him in a heavy firefight.  If the unit commander goes down the data link automatically jumps to the next highest ranking individual in the pre-programmed command hierarchy, not necessarily the next highest ranking individual.

Sanders believed in the control of data.  In the first engagement he had been overwhelmed when his captain had taken a hit and the overlay immediately flooded his screens.  Red crosses demanding medical attention and timers showing how long the request for backup had been active.  Each of the soldiers were somewhere in the queue for fire support and half were in the queue for medical assistance.  The two medics, Charley and Ivan, had been swept away with the tide of requests and secondary screening provided by each soldiers’ biomedical report from his body armor.

The most terrifying piece of data was of course the white flashing of a red spinning star to white and then blinking to a black circle.  Man down. 

That first day his screen had instantly received over fifty black circles of the original two hundred man battalion after a brief twenty minutes of combat.  By the end of the engagement well over half the battalion had converted to black circles. 

Davis’ request for tactical data populates on the device.  Sanders approves the request.

“Sit tight,” Davis calls over the comm.

Sanders crouches down hiding in the short grass tapping the button on his glove sending a chime through the headsets to halt.

On the forearm screen he watches the tactical data from the other units feed in.  Troops in Contact.  Fire support requests and air support requests begin to stack up.  The air support beacons vanish swept away by someone up high.  A few of the fire support requests are activated with shells tracking on screen as asterisks racing across the screen. 

After impact the requests auto-clear. 

The red swirling stars begin winking into black circles and then the fire support requests wipe off the screen, command wiped. 

On his own battlefield, Sanders watches the overlay as three of his green circles explode to green stars.  None of the stars begin rotating, meaning that whatever they fired on they either killed or it took cover.

The “clear” chime rings in Sander’s headset.  He keys the unit-wide command for clear, relaying the chime to the rest of the soldiers.

Red “X” reports flash up from Tex and Cooper.  Sanders checks off automatic approval for enemy hostiles to the command map.  The Brass would likely chew his ass over this later for giving enlisted personnel access to modify the command map, but when things eventually got hairy he wasn’t going to have time to approve them.

A half dozen hostiles form a patrol pushing north to intercept Bravo Company.

Whispering, “Alright Alpha, time to step up and save Bravo’s ass like always.”

With that he taps the map and presses the button on his glove to set new way points.  Sanders sprints for the ridge breaking from the formation and heading North for Cooper and Tex.  On the display the rest of the green circles break and run dropping onto the top of the hill and finding cover. 

With the Advance company flanking around behind the patrol Sanders keys the three second timer.  With each tone the soldiers tense.  After the third tone the hillside erupts simultaneously. 

Below in the depression the patrol falls to the round torn apart by the onslaught.

Sanders keys the cease-fire tone.

Numbers beside each of the soldiers provide how much ammunition the soldier theoretically has left based on the number of rounds fired and initial load out.  Any rounds discarded with a magazine or dropped create an incorrect count.  Sanders scans the information, knowing that they can’t possibly carry enough rounds to penetrate the edge of the make shift space port.

“Captain get the hell out of there!” Davis bellows over the comm. 

Rolling over Sanders spots the incoming fighter. 

Before keying any tones, overlays, waypoints or other queues the gunship opens up on the hillside.  In a matter of seconds all the spinning green circles snap red, flash white and then wink out to black circles.  Sander’s own blue circle flashes red and emits a shriek placing a red cross beside his own icon.

“Oh shit,” he murmurs trying to find the hole. 

I’m hit but where!  I can’t feel it!

Without noticing him Maulk, the only remaining medic, scoops Sanders up and drags him behind cover before the fighter makes a second pass. 

“Where is he hit?” Davis asks.

“I’m looking,” the medic says quietly as the world begins to fade.

Sanders jerks upright, driving the chair into the wall hard enough to send it rebounding, rubbing his stomach feeling for the hole created by the bullet.  Frantically his hands work across the outer skin of the exoskeleton-pressurized armor.  Looking down, he watches his hands fumble across his glossy black abdomen before realizing the wound has long since vanished into a pink scar.

Still panicked he keys the medical diagnostics of the power armor.  The screen shows the half dozen blood pressure, flow, temperature, adrenaline levels as well as more metrics than he could quickly make out.  All read green.

The bodyguard seated next to him stands facing him weapon drawn aimed at Sander’s feet, “You ok there
Grendels?”

“Huh, oh yeah I am fine.  I am ok, sorry,” Sanders says sheepishly sitting back down. 

Inside the air conditioned suit in the air conditioned building sweat trickles down his spine.

“Thought you were going
berserk there for a second was going to have to put you down.”

“Nah,” Sanders says, As if that pistol would even put a dent in my armor.

Slowly holstering his weapon the bodyguard looks nervously at Sanders unsure if it’s safe to sit back down now.

Trying to put the guard at ease he stretches his legs out in front of him and puts his hands behind his head in a gesture of resignation.  The guard looks back at the door for the classroom and decides to have a seat instead of standing for the remaining twenty minutes.

“Who are you here with?”

“Sarah,” Sanders says.

“Oh,” the guard mouths.  The Owens name makes quite a splash on the frontier worlds as one of the largest infantry equipment manufacturers in the business.  “Guess that’s your Hunter parked outside?”

Sanders nods, his eyes half closed.

“I served in one during the Hansen conflict.  Took one helluva beating.  Got blasted with about fifteen, thirty mil rounds.  Saved our asses.  We put it to that gunship.  Popped it like a can with the RIM-19s”

Sanders nods, eyes still closed behind the full helmet, “Yeah the Hunter’s specialty was dropping air support.  Damn squids always had better air cover than we did so we just stopped making fighters and started making our IFVs hell on air support.”

“Were you cavalry?”

“No I wish I was cavalry.  I was Mechanized Infantry.”

“How was that?” the guard asks leaning in, waiting for the story.

“Not as comfortable as this stuff.”

“What do you mean I thought you Mech Imps had the best gear the military had to offer?”

“Yeah we had the best gear the old US government had to offer, which is to say we had the most comfortable battle armor around, but it was far from the best.  Russians and Chinese beat us in the modification race so they beat us to designing power armor to augment
Grendels.  Idiots in congress were hell bent on test-cases, trial runs, medical procedure, and bureaucratic bullshit that forced the military to purchase the equipment from the lowest bidder constrained by ignorant policies that forced our manufacturers to ramp up costs to almost a million dollars a suit.”

“Russians were cranking the damn things out for about a tenth as much.  Were less comfortable but I’d rather be operating with the Russians than the US.  Every single one of their special forces
Grendels had powered armor and there were thousands of them.  There were maybe three hundred operating with US spec war.”

“No way you were in spec war?  As an imp. . .”

“Hell no, as soon as I did my three combat tours in regular power armor I signed on with Kinetic Solutions.  Did the first two tours in open kinetic body armor.  The contractors understood what had to be done, even more so than the Russians.”

“Russia was out to conquer the world in the aftermath, they wanted control of Earth.  The contractors saw the real money.  They saw an empire of planets out there with advanced alien technology for the taking.  They knew the need to defend our home world and set out to make themselves rich doing what we wanted them to do.”

“How did they differ?” The guard leans in clearly wary of the nebulous entities that have since become the ruling authorities over the interstellar human race.

“Contractors tested modification for a few weeks after the mods and then they implemented them.  While they were growing us they set to work on building our armor, cheap, made by the best manufacturing firm not the cheapest bidder, built however they wanted without bureaucratic oversight.  The end result is what you see here.  Air conditioned, cushioned, nutrient bags, saline bags more armor and a bigger power pack at a third the price of the US hardware.”

Sanders scoots back in his chair, “Put the US government out of business.  KS supplied protection for the colonies and left everyone else behind.”

“Didn’t the UN and the US both file subpoenas and injunctions against KS for hijacking equipment?”

“They only stole equipment from bases they captured.  Spoils of war and all.”

“But what about the injunctions?”

“What about them?  By then, by the time the greedy politicians realized power was getting out from under them and people were moving to the stars without their jurisdiction, taxation or control it was too late.  All KS manufacturing, supply, mining and personnel were already in space.  We were in space with more guns and better ships.  KS sent an official memo that ordered them to drop the investigation and proceedings before the pushed a rock into earth.”

“So what about the UN consulate here?  Why don’t they just arrest Mr. Owens and be done with it?”

Sanders barks out a laugh over the speaker, “With what army?”

The guard scratches his head again.

“Kinetic produced more Grendels and body armor than the entire rest of the Earth Alliance.  Mr. Owens is the owner and CEO with a commanding interest of sixty percent of the company.  So let’s just say Glint arrests him if they make it through security.  In less than forty-eight hours your air space would become very crowded with a large number of the best equipped and vetted soldiers alive.  We ALL fought the squids.  We ALL fought the squids for the Earth Alliance until we realized bureaucracies could never possibly keep up with the demands of the war effort.”

“My whole unit walked off station and reported to KS.  I wasn’t about to watch another one of my guys die because our government was too stupid to understand how to fight a war.”

“You don’t see a problem with companies operating outside the rules of law?” the guard says standing up and crossing his arms.

“They are operating inside the laws of a truly free market.  Glint, Earth, whoever can make whatever demands they want and KS and the other PMCs can tell them to piss off.  If KS starts operations I don’t agree with I take my men, my hardware and I walk.  Mr. O has to find another security detail but now he knows the guys who used to have his back don’t.  And that’s bad because we know everything about his schedule and operations and are back up for hire even to his competition.”

“Welcome to the wild west.  Behave or someone somewhere will pay enough to have you hunted down.”

The door across the hall swings open and a handful of children spill into the hallway headed for their respective rides or guards.  Cinderella comes running and jumps up eager to be caught by her big brother.

“Well little lady, how was class?”

“It was awful, we had to work these puzzles and it lasted forever!”

Sanders smiles comparing his education to hers. 

“Used to in school they made us memorize lots of information.  We didn’t really know any better back then.  Your teachers,” he gestures to the door as he turns to walk down the hall, “know that
it's better to make you a faster learner than it is to make you knowledgeable.”

“Either way it was boring!” she wails flailing around.

Sanders walks past the guard without giving him any attention.

Must be nice to believe that rules are more important than the people they protect.

“On my way out.”

“Roger, all clear outside sir,” Allen said.

“Check in.”

Each of the three names flash through the comm box quickly indicating each is active on the comm band.

Opening the vestibule door Sanders checks the space before sealing the door behind him.  Another several steps away the heavy doors outside are still closed.  He takes the few steps while watching the camera outside before flipping to the live feeds from his own men watching the building from outside.

“Coming out.”

He pushes the heavy door and the mag lock releases, swinging wide on its bearings.

Five steps away the Hunter sits with the passenger side door open.  Sanders hands Sarah off to Allen who climbs into the vehicle with her and then promptly closes the door.  Davis slips around the far side of the vehicle to the gunner seat while Sanders pulls open the passenger door for the front seat.

Before the doors cycle through, Miller presses the controls sending the Hunter growling down the street. 

“Filled her up around the corner while we were waiting boss,” Miller informs. 

“Good, not that we need it but, it’s always nice to have the extra fuel in case.”

“Captain, you gotta calm down.  This
isn't the war anymore.  I know you take a lot of pride in our job but seriously I doubt we are ever going to see a live firefight again.”

“Miller, do you know how long they think we will live?”

“A while?”

Sanders laughs, “Honestly they are still talking we might have a hundred years left on the hardware before it starts going faulty.  So you telling me you think the universe is going to be peaceful for another two hundred years?”

“Not really sir, but I kinda figured you wouldn’t be taking any combat jobs in the future.  We have a pretty cushy job here.  Why would we go looking for other work?”

“If we find another job that needs to be done more than this one Miller,” Sanders sighs turning his helmet to face him instead of using the side cameras, “Then I am going to go do it.”

“Miller don’t even act like you don’t miss the battlefield,” Allen chimes.

Davis chuckle
s, “Hell some days I miss it.  Easier knowing that if you saw something moving you shot it.  Right now I gotta play nice.”

“I don’t,
” Sanders sighs.