"Bravo Company, continue your attack. That is an order."
"We can't," Cozek screamed. "We are pinned down under heavy fire. Position untenable, less than ten effectives left. Jesus, help us."
"Corporal Cozek is relieved as acting commanding officer. The next senior soldier is to assume command and continue the attack. Acknowledge."
No reply came, whether out of defiance, or because it had been blocked by enemy jamming, or perhaps because there was no longer anyone left in Bravo Company able to respond. Stark studied his HUD, trying to bury himself in an analysis of the battle, anything other than think of the soldiers trapped in front of friendly lines. The situation gradually came clear, even through the enemy jamming and the partial picture Stark could derive from his back door into the overloaded command net. Headquarters had been dealing with the disaster by throwing the least damaged units into already failed assaults, and now they'd run out of even those units and were using whatever was left, reinforcing failure in a panicked fixation on the original plan. Everything was coming apart, the brass didn't know what to do, and they were sacrificing more and more of the front-line soldiers rather than admit failure. For the first time in his career, Stark truly hated the faceless minds directing a battle.
Hate accomplishes nothing,
he tried to remind himself.
But these deaths aren't accomplishing anything, either.
"For God's sake, get us out of here!" someone pleaded, the words partially obscured by the thunder of almost continuous concussions transmitted through the lunar rock into armor clinging to that rock in desperate search for safety.
Stark lay still, an ache in his belly building as if fire and acid warred there in match to the violence outside. Thoughts ricocheted through his head, cascading memories and visions. Corporal Pablo Desoto, dying instantly in the hellfire of a heavy shell. His father's voice:
Don't ever let them down, they depend on you.
Lying alone on another ridge, trying to hold off pursuers and pretending help would come when he knew his chain of command didn't give a damn what happened to him or any other soldier as long as the officers could sit in the rear and play their promotion games. And long ago and far away, another set of friends, dying one by one amid grass slick with their blood. It had happened before. It was happening again. It wasn't supposed to. It was never supposed to happen again.
Kate, goddammit, I promised you.
Nothing you can do, little brother. Save yourself.
No! I promised.
Save yourself.
The hell. Not this time.
Stark lay on the frigid lunar rock as the fire inside grew, pressure building through his chest and throat, hands trembling slightly, eyes unfocused. The pressure built to a mighty force that blocked breathing, holding there, then somehow shattered whatever had held it confined and flowed free. Stark drew a ragged breath as the fire vanished, leaving nothing in its wake but a resolution cold and clear that filled him with calm certainty. He glanced at the HUD, where symbols flickered in time to the deaths of fellow soldiers, his mind suddenly seeing solutions with the cool precision of crystalline plates sliding into place. He called up a special file, the one he had asked Gomez to acquire for him, linked it with Captain Noble's symbol, then triggered the backdoor channel so the other Sergeants could hear what happened. "Captain, this is Sergeant Stark."
"Yeah." Noble sounded annoyed and aggravated. "What do you want?"
Stark kept his own voice formal and correct. "Captain, I am leading my Squad in to rescue the surviving members of Bravo Company, First Battalion, First Brigade, Third Division."
"What?" Stark's words had apparently jerked Noble out of his self-absorption. "I didn't hear those orders. Who gave you those orders?"
"No one, Captain. I am acting independently."
"You can't act independently! What's going on?"
"I am going to rescue those soldiers," Stark stated implacably. "I will not sit back here and let them die uselessly while some idiots far behind the lines continue ordering senseless assaults."
"Stark, you're relieved of duties and under arrest!"
"I thought you might say that, Captain." Stark triggered the file he had called up earlier, a file with an innocuous name to help fool the watchdogs but that was commonly known as "frag." In the old days, the only way for soldiers to take out a stupid or hated officer had been to use one of their own grenades, a tactic known as fragging, after the fragmentation produced by the weapon. Now, with everyone dependent on electronics, soldiers had a simpler, surer, and at least initially nonlethal method of accomplishing the same thing. Stark had never imagined himself needing a frag file, strictly illegal programs hacked together by an unknown soldier decades ago and periodically updated by other unknowns, but thanks to Gomez he had one hidden and handy nonetheless. Now, targeted at Captain Noble, the frag virus froze his communications, his weapons, even the systems in his battle armor that assisted movement.
"Ethan?" Vic called, her voice horrified. "I've lost comms to the Captain. Did you frag Noble?"
"Yeah."
"Are you insane? When you killed his systems he dropped off the command and control circuit, too."
"That's the idea."
"Ethan, that means headquarters lost vid from him. We can't hide that, or explain it, because we're not directly involved in combat!"
"I know that. I don't care. I won't leave those guys to die out there."
"Ethan . . ." Vic's reply trailed out, as if bitten off with frustrated violence. "Don't be an idiot, Ethan," she finally pleaded.
"Too late." Stark bared his teeth in something that wasn't a grin. "I'm going in, Vic. Taking my Squad with me. Are you coming?"
"I don't—" Vic's exasperation melted into quicksilver uncertainty.
Stark could see her, in the smooth planes where his mind operated now, see Vic's face fixed immobile as her thoughts raced, balancing duty against loyalty and wondering where each lay. "I haven't got all night, lady."
"Shut up, you ape," Vic snarled back. "Yeah, I'm coming. I've had enough, too."
"Sanch?" Stark called. "How about you?"
"Are you certain of this, Stark?" The tone held the same impenetrable calm it always did, as if this were a normal conference on a normal comm circuit.
"Yeah, I'm certain. You going in? You with Vic and me on this?"
"I'm in." Sanchez might have been remarking on a poker hand.
"All right, Sergeant," Vic demanded, "you're in charge. What do we do?"
What do we do? No Tac with its hated but comforting orders, no officer calling out the drill. Just a noncom with a lot of experience in doing what he was told. Stark felt a shiver of fear and uncertainty try to break through the icy shield in his mind but fought it off.
Okay, I'll just do this backward. If I thought I was getting orders to do this, what would they say? Tac would show this, right? And this, and that. Yeah.
It felt good. It felt right. "Here, I'm sending you my Tac. What do you think?"
It took a few seconds for the transmission, and a few more for the other Sergeants to study the plan. Sanchez spoke first. "It's not enough. You cannot do this with a Platoon."
"It's a decent plan," Vic objected.
"It is," Sanchez agreed. "But we cannot do this with squads. We need Platoons. This plan requires company strength."
Company strength. Stark stared grimly ahead. He hadn't really planned on involving anyone else, getting anybody besides himself lined up for a court-martial, but now he had to try to convince six more Sergeants to join in. He braced himself, keying the Sergeants' comm circuit. "First Platoon, Third Platoon, this is Stark."
"Uh-huh." Podesta in First Platoon came back immediately. "Where do you want us, Ethan?"
"I. . . what?"
"Where do you want us?" Sergeant Podesta repeated. "We've been listening. We know what's going down. Our Lieutenant's been fragged and we're waiting for orders. How do we get those poor bastards out of there?"
"Third Platoon?" Stark asked.
"Here. We're with you, too."
Stark checked his HUD, suddenly wondering how far this might be spreading. All the Sergeants could talk and listen in to their own circuit. Perhaps, he thought, this was how a pebble felt when it started an avalanche, then shook his head.
Get this job done. I can worry about the rest later.
"Here's my Tac. Can you guys execute?"
"No problem." First and Third Platoons would move up on the flanks, providing pinpoint suppression on any enemy fire. Meanwhile, First and Third Squads of Second Platoon would advance far enough to overrun the trapped grunts of Bravo Company so that Third Squad could pass them back through Second Squad to safety.
"Ain't gonna be enough," Sergeant Tostig in Third Platoon observed. "Too much enemy fire coming down there. We can't hold it down with a company's worth of fire-power."
"I know," Stark agreed, voice flat. "Don't worry. There'll be more fire coming in. Get your people moving while I get support laid on." He felt it then, loyalty and obedience balancing again, hesitating before the final commitment.
Then the other Sergeants rogered up and the world shifted into a new pattern.
Stark made another call. Divisional artillery. An alien world, where men and women far behind the front lines, bunkered securely under the defensive umbrella, tended huge metal beasts that spat fire. Nothing like an infantry grunt's world, but maybe loyalty held across that gap in experience. "Grace?"
"Yeah. Master Sergeant Grace here."
"This is Stark."
"Ethan Stark? Long time no see, ground ape. What's with the back-channel call?" Despite the casual words, Grace's voice had a clipped quality, as if something were being held inside.
"I need everything you've got, laid on these positions," Stark added as he keyed in coordinates, "and I need it in ten minutes."
"Everything?" Grace's negative head-shake was somehow apparent over the circuit. "I need the Colonel to approve that, Stark. I can't commit Division Artillery on some grunt's say-so, even an old drinking buddy's."
"Sure you can."
"Bull. Have your Captain call in."
"No can do. He's out of action."
"Huh?" Now Stark could minds-eye Grace scratching his head. "You guys haven't been under fire."
"No, we haven't."
"Well, then have one of your other officers ask for it."
Stark took a deep breath. "All our officers are off-line."
"All of them?" Stark could imagine Grace at work now, calling up his own picture of the front to check individual stats. "How . . . ? You fragged all your officers?"
"They're not hurt. Listen, we're going after the Third Division apes trapped out in front and we need artillery support to get them out of there. You got that, Grace? Do I need to spell it out?"
Silence lingered, while Stark studied the ground he'd have to cover with his Squad once they started moving, wondered how long it might take headquarters officers obsessed with their own activity to notice something strange happening, notice officers of units not in combat dropping off the vid feed, notice those same units acting without apparent orders, and mentally cursed rear-echelon noncoms as he waited. "Stark?" Grace finally questioned. "You guys did it? You're calling the shots?"
"Yeah. You turning us in? Gonna drop your rounds on us instead of the enemy?"
Low laughter sounded, bitter with anger. "The hell. It's about time. I had a brother in Third Division. Had. Give me a couple of minutes and our Colonel will be off-line, too. You've got your fire support, Stark. Get those grunts out of there."
Last but far from least, Stark called his Squad. "Third Squad, I have disabled Captain Noble and am advancing on my own initiative to pull out the Third Division soldiers trapped out front. None of you is obligated to follow my orders." Stark waited, watching as the timeline he'd created ticked toward "go."
"So, what are our orders?" Gomez finally demanded.
"You don't have to follow these orders," Stark repeated.
"They're from you, ain't they, Sarge?" Murphy asked.
"Yeah, they're from me."
"That's all we need to know. Let's go."
Stark smiled tightly, a warmth coming back into the coldness filling him. "Here's a feed for your Tacs. We start moving in a couple of minutes. Any questions?" He shifted to a private circuit. "Mendoza."
"Yes, Sergeant."
"What do you think of the plan? It look good to you?"
"Yes, Sergeant." Mendoza didn't try to hide his surprise at being asked.
"Good. Listen, if you get any command-level ideas, you pass them on to me on the double. No sitting back quiet and keeping your thoughts to yourself. Understand?"
"Yes, Sergeant." Firm this time, with more than a hint of pride.
Stark shifted back to the company-level picture, watching as his HUD counted down the seconds. It went green and he shouted "Go!" in the same instant. Bravo Company, First Division, surged forward, evading among the dead landscape with the skill of long practice. It took a few minutes for the enemy to spot the careful advance; then the fire pummeling the survivors of Bravo Company, Third Division, began lifting, seeking targets among the First Division soldiers.
Stark huddled behind a rock twice his size as a dumb, heavy artillery round slammed to the surface on the other side, the crash of its explosion transmitting as vibration through the rock in a dim echo of the shell's fury.
Come on, Grace.
Even as the urgent thought came, a massive barrage opened up from behind, American artillery plunging in to saturate the enemy defenses and blanket the enemy positions with a storm of fire. For a moment, Stark had a confused vision of Armageddon, the world ending in a final firestorm of combat; then his mind focused down on the job at hand, ignoring the distraction of death's messengers passing overhead.
The enemy fire faltered, dropping to almost nothing as the opposing troops went to ground. They could wait. Sooner or later the American artillery would have to let up; then the enemy would raise their heads again enough to target the attackers, waiting for this latest charge to carry another company of American soldiers within range. One more company repeating the pattern of attack they'd seen multiple times already. One more company to decimate while it futilely surged against defenses too strong and too strongly held.