When we finally made the plain in front of the mound, it was near dawn. The Cray, who mainly flew during the day, were grounded by the remnants of the hurricane’s driving wind and rain. We were led through a succession of trenches into an abandoned mine, an old vestige of the dormant volcanic system of Kilimanjaro. We parked our EXOs and were led to our bunk areas.
When I finally fell into a troubled sleep, it was to dreams of the dead refugees, their limbs moving in the wind, hearing all the while the words of our crucified drone, chittering in a voice wracked by sorrow that we were being punished for our sins and that we should stop whining about it and take it like men.
The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
Douglas MacArthur
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
S
OMEWHERE
I
’D READ
about the Battle of the Somme between British and German forces during World War I. Over the course of the battle, more than one million soldiers were killed or wounded. It was trench warfare at its very worst. The soldiers cowered in their trenches, keeping their heads down, praying to their God, and hoping that when the next whistle blew and they were told to climb the ladders and rush over the top they wouldn’t be mowed down by a fusillade of bullets.
Trench warfare had become synonymous with the futility of war. On July 1, 1916, the British Army had more than fifty-seven thousand casualties in one day, marking the darkest day in Britain’s military history. That is, until three alien ships landed in London and killed more than seven million. And now, as we stared out across the flat plain between our positions near the village of Boma Ng’ombe and the mound that was dead center in Kilimanjaro Airport, I wished we had those fifty-seven thousand with us; it would be better than the three thousand we had now.
It would take a miracle of modern warfare for us to win. I’d never been one to believe in miracles, but like those British soldiers in the Battle of the Somme, I prayed, promising God, the universe and everything that if only I’d come out of this alive, I’d do whatever they wanted of me, because from my vantage point there was absolutely no hope of winning.
Kilimanjaro has three volcanic cones: Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. The latter two are extinct, but Kibo is merely dormant, inspiring several geological agencies to come together in the 1980s to build lava diversion zones. Using the southwestern slope of Kilimanjaro as their test bed, they created a series of concrete and steel-reinforced furrows to re-direct the lava flow past the population zones and into a huge cavern beneath the flanks of the mountain.
This, of course, had never been tested, but what it had done was leave a network of serviceable battlements for BCT OMBRA. The trench systems were arrayed downslope from the mountain, and after the application of removable metal roofs, they created a staging area of which our First-World-War ancestors would be envious.
In the no-man’s-land between us and the mound was what used to be the village of Boma Ng’ombe. Continually inhabited for three thousand years, the place’s name meant
Village of Cows,
but it was now a graveyard of bones, seven destroyed mud huts, a concrete building with its roof and walls staved in, and a 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air. Missing tires and windows, the auto’s red paint still glistened in the morning sun, as if it had just been washed. The only thing more out of place at the foot of a twenty-thousand foot free-standing mountain in Tanzania was the Cray mound itself... which was starting to show a little activity.
As I watched, a black speck climbed free from one if its protrusions. It began to circle, ranging higher and higher. The low hum alerted everyone. Men came and pulled the metal roofs across the trenches. One nudged me aside and shot me a withering look, treating the
noob
with contempt. I grinned, but he moved on, rushing down the line.
He was a member of the Brigade Support Battalion, or BSB. They’d been here for two months, dragging gear into place, and preparing for our arrival. They’d also managed to preposition the rest of the EXOs and the eight-inch Howitzers. Now that we were here, they could finally get their war on. They’d been attacked for sixty straight days, but hadn’t been allowed to fight back. Now that we’d arrived, they would finally get a chance to see what sort of damage we could do.
I left the battlements and headed back inside. I passed dozens of men and women dressed in the same desert multi-cam fatigues, moving more steel into place to hide the day away. The fatigues, which had seemed so out of place back in Alaska, were the same color as the Tanzanian plain.
Watching the men and women of the BSB, I couldn’t help but imagine how impossible their task must have seemed their first day upon arrival in the shadow of the alien mound. A few creases in the earth and an underground cavern was what they had to work with, and with that they were required to build a fortification strong enough to keep us from being killed while we fought. There was a lesson there for our own mission: the BSB had got on with the job, putting one foot in front of the other, and we would do the same.
I headed out of the trench area towards the main cavern. I stepped aside to allow an eight-inch Howitzer to trundle by on ancient tracks, moving into line with the others in the last trench. I covered my mouth and nose with one hand as it passed, throwing up dust.
I kept heading downhill, passing men and woman rushing to their duties. The cavern was lit with electric lights. Although the facilities were too far beneath the surface for the drones’ EMP to affect them, the generators were still hardened, as were the computers. Techs from the BSB had created Tempest-level Faraday-caged rooms in the event the worst happened and a pod of the damned creatures got inside.
I made it back to our squad just in time for our mission brief. We were to back up 10th Recon Platoon, which was going to make a nighttime reconnaissance on the mound. They were to rendezvous at Boma Ng’ombe, then wait to determine how the drones would react to their presence. The Cray were largely inactive at night and we wanted to see if they’d remain so. While we were standing by, the eight-inchers would lay down a barrage. The artillerymen had also mounted Vulcan cannons on the Howitzers’ flanks, to provide anti-aircraft defense if needed.
We were all tense. This would mark the first use of the EXOs in combat. We’d practiced with them, we knew their flaws and their strengths. In order to protect against EMP bursts, each suit required grounding, much like a lightning rod. Conductive studs on the soles of the EXO’s feet allowed the damaging surges to dissipate into the ground. This of course limited an EXO to ground-based maneuvers, but provided constant protection for the wearer and the EXO’s internal electronics.
This was all well and good, but we soon learned that the EMP hardening caused immense problems with communications. Fortunately, TF OMBRA came up with a method using Extremely Low Frequencies (ELF) with a ground dipole antenna established through the soles of the EXO’s feet. Since the majority of EMP energy is seen in the microwave frequencies, the system was capable of operating on a battlefield in which EMPs had been brought into play. Then advanced digital modulation techniques allowed them to compress data on the signal, allowing real-time feeds between team members and back to base. A backup, transmit-only communications system resided in an armored blister atop the helmet. Called the Rotating Burst Transmission Module (RBTM), it was comprised of a one-inch rotating sphere inside of the blister with its own battery power. One side of the sphere was able to pick up a packet of data when rotated ‘inside’ the Faraday cage of the EXO, then rotated ‘outside’ this protection to transmit the packet as a burst.
The EXO itself was an armored and EMP-hardened powered exoskeleton suit that stood about nine feet tall and had about double the bulk of a strong human. The outer covering alternated layers of Kevlar and titanium, bonded together to protect both the wearer and the grounding web. Internally the suit had hardened electronics for video feeds, voice communication, targeting, night vision, sound amplification/dampening and vital sign monitoring, along with heating, cooling and an air re-breather system with CO2 scrubbers, all powered by extremely light, high-energy rechargeable batteries. All systems were controlled by eye movements, through an internal HUD system with Gaze technology, or remotely from base as a backup.
Each Recon EXO had three primary weapon systems.
The integral rocket launcher (IRL) was mounted over the left shoulder on rails, so as to rotate it back out of the way and bring it forward to firing position when needed. Standard payload was thirty Hydra rockets with air-burst warheads set to detonate at a range determined before launch by the suit’s internal targeting system. Missiles were free-flight after launch, with a hardened internal timer for detonation. This system was designed to engage alien drones at maximum to medium targeting range.
Pulled out of mothballs at Aberdeen Proving Ground before the invasion, the XM214 was the EXO’s primary attack armament, comprised of a six-barrelled rotating minigun fed from a backpack ammo supply through an ammo feed arm. TF OMBRA modified the original 1970s General Electric design, giving the system three backpack-mounted 500-round ammo boxes linked together, for a total of 1500 rounds. The original 1970s electronic controls, which could modify the rate of fire on the fly, were micronized, hardened against EMP and incorporated into the ammo boxes, giving the system triple redundancy and protecting the electronics. The servo that spun the barrels only engaged when the automatic harness system that pulled the weapon back out of the way was released.
When all else failed, a grunt needed a blade. Nearly a meter long and sixteen centimeters wide, TF OMBRA’s harmonic blade vibrated at ultrasonic frequencies, making it thousands of times more effective at slicing through armored opponents than a normal blade. The weapon was made from Stellite to help resist the deleterious vibrational forces as well as any environmental extremes an OMBRA grunt might encounter, and the vibration was generated in the hilt by an electrically isolated system powered by a high energy battery and grounded through either the suit glove holding it or the sheath it rested in.
When the time came, we climbed into our suits. They’d been cleaned and recharged by the BSB techs. I checked my HUD. Front and rear feeds worked. Ammunition inventory was a check. Power was at ninety-nine percent. I tested the servos in the legs, hips, shoulders and elbows, as well as the automatic harness for the minigun. All were functioning properly. I conducted a radio check with Olivares, then came up on the Team Net and communicated back to base. Check. Check. Check.
Once everyone was ready, we moved out. Six of us, each half again taller than a man, moving fluidly up the incline to our trail position behind 10th Recon, who were already in place inside Trench One.
This was it. All the learning, all the hours, all the exercise, all the speeches came down to these few minutes. We’d prepared for months and were as ready as we could possibly be.
We heard the Net Call.
“All Stations, this is Net, standby on radio silence. Operation in progress.”
The occasional chatter died to nothing.
“Romeo One-Zero, this is Base. Prepare to move on my mark.”
All the recon elements had become Romeo elements for ease of communication. 10th Recon had been redesignated Romeo One-Zero. We were Romeo Three.
“All Romeos, engage sound deafening.”
Using Gaze technology, I keyed down external sound to five percent. Then I began counting. When I reached thirty, the eights fired in unison. The ground shook. Dust fell from the surface into the trench. A low rumble made my teeth ache.
“First volley away. Fire two.”
Five seconds later, a second volley shook me. Then the BSB techs moved the steel plates to the rear. Romeo One-Zero pulled themselves up and out, and began running across the plain.
We moved forward and climbed so we could see over the edge. We had a ground-level view and watched where the first and second volleys impacted. Great plumes of smoke lifted into the air as the Armor-piercing Depleted Uranium (APDU) shells hit the mound.
The drones were in chaos. They flew at odd angles, often colliding in mid-air.
“Fire three.”
The third volley left the eights. We could track them through the air using our telemetry system, moving in ballistic arcs, slamming into the mound.
We cheered. And as we cheered, so did the rest of the Brigade Combat Team, who were watching the fight through helmet feeds and on plasma TVs arrayed throughout the complex.
I couldn’t help but smile.
Any minute now, I expected the mound to fall. The combined might of thirty eight-inch Howitzer rounds was impossible to defend against... or so we thought. When the smoke cleared, we saw that there’d been no damage. Not even a dent in the surface of the mound’s exterior.
“Base, this is Romeo Three Alpha. No evident damage. I say again, no damage.”
I felt Olivares’s words like punches to the gut.
The drones were no longer in chaos. Now that they knew what was happening, and that their mound was undamaged, they reformed into a spiral.
Romeo One-Zero, meanwhile, was almost to Boma Ng’ombe.
But soon the tornado of drones descended upon the recon squad and EMP flashes burst from them as explosions from shoulder-fired missiles flared and blossomed. Before any of the members of Romeo One-Zero could make it to cover, the drones fell upon them, ripping and slashing. For a brief moment, I could make out the EXOs holding their own. Miniguns opened fire; blades sliced through alien bodies. I heard screamed commands through the net. For one brief moment, I keyed into the feed from Romeo One-Zero Alpha. He was blind except for the constant moving of drone limbs, hammering, ripping, and twisting past the front and rear camera feeds. Then there was light as his feed gained distance from the fight. Only it was moving higher and higher.