The War for Profit Series Omnibus (15 page)

Several voices came over the intercom almost in unison, “Check.” The situation map came back on the screen. The sloppy circle and arrow were still there.

“Chief?” it was Sergeant Boggs.

“Yes.”

“You do know you’re the platoon leader?”

“I do now.”

“Just keep two of your tanks on your left, two on your right and everything will go fine.”

“The other tank commanders know that?”

“Yeah, they’ve done this sort of thing before.”

Galen turned on his platoon commo net. “This is Chief Raper, your platoon leader. My driver informs me you have done this sort of thing before. That means you’ll damn sure do it right. Anything less is unsat.”

Sergeant Boggs shook his head. Galen kicked the back of his helmet.

“That goes for you, too.”

The boat detached from the ship and fell from orbit. It circled the planet once before entering the atmosphere and then came down at a steep angle for fifteen minutes. It leveled off at five hundred meters above Hobart’s ocean. After it flew to the shore line the assault boat slowed to a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. The rear cargo hatch opened inward, folding into the boat’s overhead. The boat dropped down to just two meters elevation. Galen’s tank pallet slid to the rear of the cargo deck. The drag chute deployed from the pallet and pulled the tank off the assault boat.

Galen braced himself for the landing. The pallet slid onto the ground, the straps holding the tank onto the pallet broke, and Sergeant Boggs drove at full throttle. The impact shoved him forward, his safety harness holding him in his seat. His helmet clacked against the weapons control panel. Galen’s tank was cruising across the flat, barren landscape at top speed behind the assault boat. The four other tanks of his platoon skid-dropped in front of him and then maneuvered to get on line, two on the left and two on the right.

Galen switched to broadcast on platoon push. “Status?”

“Three two, roger out.”

“Three one, roger out.”

“Three four, roger out.”

“Three three, uh, roger. Uh, out.”

“Wake the hell up, three three.”

Galen saw the mission heading. It matched the compass heading of the tank. He brought the situation map on-screen. A line of blue tank symbols were on line approaching the objective. There were seventeen blue symbols. Galen’s third platoon was the right flank. Tad’s first platoon was the left flank. Second platoon was the five tanks in the center. Two tanks cruised side by side a hundred meters behind second platoon. They were the company commander’s and executive officer’s tanks, commanding the charge.

The flat plain was covered with powdery dry rocks that churned into dust as the tanks rolled across them. The brownish-pink color stretched to the horizon where it met a green-grey sky. On the rear-view screen Galen could see craggy blue mountains and green-blue foothills. There were still ten kilometers between the company of charging light tanks and their objective.

“Hey Sergeant Boggs, why doesn’t the enemy take advantage of the better defensive terrain of the mountains?”

“They did. Our panzer grenadiers kicked them out of there. Now they’re in the open, using heavy weapons to ward off a slow-moving infantry attack. Now we go and finish them off. We’re the only tanks fast enough to get to them and kill them before they can run away.”

“We couldn’t strafe them with close air support?”

“They got bitchin’ air defense.”

The objective was three klicks away. A trail of blue glowing shells streamed out of the objective area for a second. The upper hull of the tank on Galen’s far right vaporized, the burning hulk of the lower hull rolling along on its road wheels as it careened to the left and flipped end-over-end. Laser cannons from second platoon returned fire. The discharge temporarily slowed their vehicles, causing a brief sag in the charging line of light armor. An explosion blossomed from the center of the objective area and a smoke ring rose above it.

“Scratch one flak gun, Chief.”

“Too bad for the guys in three four.”

“They’re fine, Chief. They were auto-ejected by their tank’s computer when it realized the vehicle was doomed. Check your auxiliary status screen.”

Galen did. The vehicle was black but the two symbols for the crewmen were still green. The rear view screen showed two parachutes floating to the ground.

“Dismounts to the front!”

Galen sprayed grazing fire from his coaxial machine gun. He put the weapon on auto-fire and then popped his hatch to stand and fire the copulas’ machine gun. The charged rail of the gun pulsed a magnetic field down its length. Steel balls pulled into the field from the ammo feeder sped away at a velocity of twenty seven hundred meters per second. Five rounds a second, accurate to within a centimeter at a range of three hundred meters. Powerful enough for a single round to explode a person from the inside out with hydrostatic pressure if they weren’t wearing a combat suit. Galen hosed rounds into a two-man crew preparing to fire an antitank cannon. They blew apart. Their weapon flew to pieces. Galen searched for more targets. Soldiers popping up from fighting positions to fire anti-armor rockets or flamers. Targets were trashed as soon as they appeared in Galen’s sights. Targets blew apart before Galen could get to them, the coaxial machine gun taking them out on automatic mode. Then, not enough targets. No more targets.

Galen dropped back into his seat and took the weapon off automatic.

“Slow up, driver. Let our subordinate tanks get in front of us so we can watch their backs.” The status screen showed the two other platoons doing the same. The charge slowed to a walking pace as the company picked its way through the objective.

Two seats ejected from the tank to Galen’s left front. Tank three-one. An instant later the turret of the tank lifted into the air as the tank’s hull warped outward and lifted a meter off the ground. It landed sideways with black smoke billowing from a hull that glowed cherry red. Three-one’s fusion bottle, a half-meter spherical lump of lead and titanium alloy with reaction mass at its core, rolled away. The turret fell on the ground behind Galen’s tank.

The company commander’s voice came over the command net, “Hold up! It’s a mine field!” The tanks of the company stopped on line and continued to scan for targets. Nothing moved in the objective area. “Stay where you are. The grunts will finish this.”

Galen’s status screen showed two tanks as black but the crewmen showed green. Three one and three four were destroyed. At least he hadn’t lost any troops. The main screen showed friendly infantry carriers approaching from behind.

Ten minutes later the tracked vehicles stopped between the tanks and their infantry dismounted. The squads fanned out and picked their way along using mine detectors to find and mark mines as they went. The tanks and infantry carriers crept along behind them, avoiding the mines and shooting any raiders who offered to surrender. The raiders weren’t part of any legitimate military force and had to be dealt with harshly. In accordance with the unit’s charter with the bonding commission, illegal combatants had to be exterminated here to discourage combat activity by every little hooyah who thinks they have the right to just decide all on their own they can take up arms and kill people. After an hour the objective was clear. The infantry carriers picked up their grunts and drove back to the rendezvous point.

“Okay, troops. Fire up the mines.”

The tankers drove back across the mine field and fired their laser cannons at the marked mines. The mines left craters in the ground a meter deep and five meters across when they exploded. Galen buttoned up his tank to keep out the dust and dampen the shock waves of the explosions. Galen’s platoon broke from the company and picked up the four crewmen who were ejected from their tanks. A troop, the former driver of three four, stood in the auxiliary gunner’s hatch of Galen’s tank. Another troop sat on the turret. Galen stood in the open hatch of his cupola.

“So how do you feel? All right?” Galen asked the troop sitting on the turret.

The troop pointed to the side of his helmet. Galen reached inside and pulled out a commo spaghetti cord and connected it to his helmet.

“Yeah, Chief?”

“You feel all right?”

“Not bad. Some guys get their neck broke when they punch out but I’m okay. Too bad about my tank.”

“That ejection modification is a good idea. I never heard of it in Hornets before.”

“We adapted them from Hellcat tanks. When you think about it, light tanks need it more than heavy tanks. But it doesn’t always work. The computer doesn’t always get you punched out in time.”

Galen’s platoon joined the tail of the company as it moved in column toward the mountains. He glanced at his situation map. Eleven tank symbols were in the column. Eleven left from the original seventeen. Six tanks killed in the charge. Two troops from second platoon showed a black status.

“So what do you figure we’ll do next, Sergeant Boggs?”

“After-action review, then we re-deploy to the fleet. We have raiders on other planets to pick off.”

“Same bunch as this?”

“Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know. It depends.”

“Right, it depends.”

***

The convoy moved along a dry stream bed in a valley through the foothills. Scrubby pioneer plants, the beginnings of the organic stage of terraforming, grew at the edges of the dry stream. Galen wondered how long it would take for dense forests and grasslands to cover Hobart. Hopefully a better name for the planet would be found before it was covered with life and human settlements. The light armor company convoyed into the mountains and parked in a box canyon. The rest of the Panzer Brigade detachment was there, the infantry carriers parked in a neat row with green tents set up behind them.

The voice of the Master Sergeant commanding the light armor company came over the intercom. “Dismount and gather around.” The commander left his helmet on the turret of his tank when he dismounted. He was almost as tall as Galen and as broad as Tad. After a moment, bare-headed tank crew members stood around him in a half circle.

“Gentlemen, let’s discuss the mission we just knocked out. I’ll start with a break-down of the tactical situation. The infantry battalion cleared the raiders out of these hills and forced them onto the plain. The raiders had heavy weapons and air defense that made infantry assault or air attack unfeasible. The infantry battalion commander requested a light armor company to finish them off. Chief Dawson, take it from there.”

“We were in a rest cycle when the mission came down. Our crews linked up with the tanks and casualty replacements in orbit around Hobart. We detached from the ship in four assault boats, three holding a platoon each and one holding the company headquarters element. We skid-dropped fifty klicks out from the objective to keep the boats outside the raider’s anti-aircraft artillery range.”

“Chief Miller?”

“We charged on-line and closed with the objective at top speed. The enemy attempted to rake us from right to left with a flak gun. The enemy fire knocked out a tank in third platoon just as we came in range.”

“Chief Dawson?”

“We returned fire, neutralizing the threat. Our laser cannons were on auto-fire. My gun was set to center-of-mass. One tank was set to half a mil lower left, another upper left, upper right and lower left. That gave my platoon a ninety percent hit probability.”

“Good. Chief Raper?”

“I lost the first tank, three four, from the enemy flak gun. Second platoon eliminated the threat. The enemy chose that moment to attack from concealed positions by popping from the ground to fight. I put my coaxial machine gun on auto-fire and popped my hatch to operate my cupola gun manually.”

“Fine. Chief Miller?”

“We kept up our speed because the target density wasn’t enough to slow us down. We could engage the targets at top speed, no problem with bypassing by accident. Even after I lost two tanks to enemy cannon fire, we were still clearing our sector at top speed.”

“Chief Dawson?”

“One of my tanks threw a track. The computer was too busy adjusting the drive to the road wheels to properly calculate the threat. The crew of two two was destroyed with their tank. Two four took a hit from an antitank rocket in the base of the turret, but the crew ejected in time.”

“Chief Raper, you slowed your platoon and went into a cautious advance with no order from me. The rest of the company followed your example. What made you do it?”

“We were in the objective area and I had no targets. It was simple reflex to the training I received at the Ostwind Academy.”

“We would have hit more mines if it weren’t for your initiative. Normally I’d chew your ass up one side and down the other for trying to usurp my command but you made a good call. I won’t dock you for making a good call.”

“Right, Master Sergeant.”

“Okay, we got them. All the raiders on Hobart are dead but due to circumstances beyond my control, extraction won’t be for a couple of days. So we have time to conduct some training. There’s about two companies of infantry left of the grunt battalion, so the ratio is just about right. We still have two platoons worth of tanks, one to train with each company of grunts.”

The commander looked around, gathered his thoughts. Then he said, “Why don’t we just chill out and relax while we wait for extraction? You, Chief Raper, tell me.”

“We have to be proficient?”

“Yes. Chief Miller, you elaborate.”

“We have a high operations tempo, many deployments, and we have to train whenever we have the chance?”

“Okay Chief Dawson, you tell them.”

“We train to fight and fight the way we train. We are always prepared to fight, even if there is no enemy but peace.”

“Good! Exactly the right answers. We train all the time so that we know our jobs forward and backward, inside and out, and can perform our duties in our sleep or under extreme duress or under the most extreme privation. We know our jobs, the jobs of our subordinates and superiors, of other troops on the battlefield. We fight like a syncopated machine, regardless, even if ninety percent of the unit gets wasted in the first nanosecond of combat.” The company commander glared at his troops and paced back and forth for a minute. The infantry carriers started to move forward.

“Mount up! We have a simulated infantry frontal assault to support!”

The tankers scrambled to their vehicles. One of the troops who had ridden on Galen’s tank climbed into the auxiliary gunner’s hatch to Galen’s left. Sergeant Boggs pulled the machine gun from the glacis plate and handed it up from the driver’s compartment to the troop. He mounted it in the swivel in front of his hatch, connected the power cord and performed a function check on the weapon.

“Move out, driver.”

Sergeant Boggs joined the convoy of infantry carriers. Galen checked his status screen and noticed that all the other tanks had three troops in their crews. They were augmented by the crew members whose tanks were destroyed in the battle. Each panzer grenadier company had ten carriers, one for each squad and another for the commander. The combined arms convoy had a tank between every two carriers. They rolled through the foothills and onto the open plain. Twenty five kilometers outside the hills the convoy made a left turn. They drove along parallel to the hills until the unit was on-line and then stopped and faced the mountains. Galen watched his situation map and heard the briefing given by the infantry battalion commander.

“Okay. We have to clear the foothills and establish a defense at the base of the mountains.” An oval drew itself to cover the nearest foothills, three kilometers deep and eight kilometers wide. Galen watched as symbols for simulated enemy units showed up. Control centers deep in the valleys, observation posts on the hilltops, anti-armor weapons and ambush squads recessed in the rocky draws. Some heavy direct-fire artillery guns faced out onto the plain.

“Okay, we’ll charge at fifty klicks an hour, top speed for the carriers. You tankers, don’t get out in front of my grunts. Concentrate on knocking out the howitzers…Oh hell, you know your jobs. Let’s do this.”

Galen marked the nearest howitzer as his first target. It was still out of range but he wanted the status screen to show that he planned to target it. Soon all the howitzers were marked as targets. At a range of seven klicks Galen fired his laser cannon. The weapon pulsed three times before the simulator credited him with the kill. He checked his status map and marked an observation post. He fired and eliminated the target. The going was slow, the tanks keeping back with the infantry carriers. The infantry carriers had Gauss machine guns swivel-mounted for their track commanders to use. They fired at a range of three kilometers at simulated enemy positions to discourage simulated enemy antitank crews from firing their weapons.

Galen fired his laser cannon at a simulated antitank gun and registered a simulated hit. The troop in the aux hatch was firing at something, probably just caught up in the moment or facetiously feigning combat action. Either way, Galen didn’t care. The weapons were in simulation mode, not actually wasting ammo or wearing out diodes and capacitors. Just wearing out track and bringing the next maintenance service interval that much closer. The line slowed at the base of the hills and stopped. Galen had no clear line of fire to a target. The infantry squad leader beside the tank motioned for it to pull forward so that his troops could use the tank for cover as they dismounted. Two squads huddled behind the tank.

“Move out slow, Boggs.”

The tank crept along. When the map showed a craggy draw ahead fifty meters to the right, Boggs stopped the tank. One squad of infantry approached the draw by getting on line parallel to it and then they crawled up to its edge to look inside.