The War for Profit Series Omnibus (67 page)

Captain Blythe commanded the tank on point, my old ORF-2 tank. The tank recovered from hill three, bumper number A-13, was to the right of Blythe, and I was in ORF-1 to the right of it. Tank HQ-3 with Major Deskavich in the hatch was to the left of ORF-2, and tank HQ-1 was to the left of him with Captain Shuttler in the hatch. Charlie was the left wing of the wedge and Bravo was the right wing. Major D rode in a command post carrier to my left rear, beside another command post carrier to its left. Major D didn’t stand up behind the gun of his track; he left that job to someone who had considerably more skill with the weapon. Major D stayed down inside and monitored comms and observed status screens.

In the distance, about ten klicks ahead, I saw what I thought at first was forest. But then I detected movement, and besides, the cluster was mostly brown and black. And even this near the equator, the ground got covered by at least ten meters of snow and ice every year here on Tumbler. At a range of four klicks I was able to positively identify the beefalo, a heard that stretched to the horizon. Major D ordered a change in the axis of advance, sixteen hundred mils to the right, and an increase in speed. We paralleled the heard for nearly two hours and finally went past it by three klicks, then turned left and drove another five klicks and finally turned left again and advanced within fifty meters of the herd and stopped.

Major D called up. “With lasers only, we don’t want to waste ammo on this, with lasers only, engage your targets. The beefalos.”

Other tanks fired before mine, their laser bolts shooting through the bodies of herd animals, passing through to hit more of them. Some fell, some looked annoyed and stared back at us. Parks had his gun at charge twelve. His shot created a two hundred meter long cone of dropped animals spread out from his muzzle, the flesh hissing and popping from the burn of the laser. The other tanks slowed their rate of fire and used charge twelve as well. The grass caught fire. The herd began moving away from us and then sped up to become a stampede. The wind was coming from my left rear and the fire was carried away from us by that wind.

D ordered us forward up to the edge of the fire and the chuck wagons pulled up next to dropped beefalos and the cooks dismounted and started sawing off choice cuts of meat. Soon they had enough and got back in their vehicles, got back in formation. D ordered a U-turn and we drove fifteen klicks away and parked in a circle facing out, an IFV between each tank and the support vehicles set up in the center. I put Parks on watch and told Caldwell to get some sleep and then I dismounted the tank and went to the TOC for a planning meeting. I was early. Major D sat on the lowered assault ramp of his command track and waved me over and patted the spot on his left. I sat down next to him.

He said, “What was the nature of your relationship with Stallion Six?”

I thought for a moment. “I’m the schools, movement, training and tasking NCO for the battalion.”

“You were his watchdog, his hatchet man. Right?”

I smiled. “Right.”

“Well I already have one of those. One is more than enough. Your girlfriend, Sergeant Dickinson.”

“Yessir.”

He leaned back, elbows on the ramp, hands on his belly. “What I need right now is a tank commander. That, and some heroes to raise morale around here.”

I scratched my head.

He sat up. “What’s your opinion of Captain Blythe?”

“He’s good, real good.”

“Can he fight a tank?”

“Shot a thousand, every six months, predictable as the sunrise and just as reliable.”

“Good.” D stood. “I’m putting ORF-1, ORF-2 and A-13 as an independent platoon and you’ll ride behind the unit as the rear guard. And you’ll flank any ambush attacks. Sound good?”

I stood. “Yessir. With any luck at all you’ll be able to hang medals all over Captain Blythe.”

D shook my hand. “Thank you for your honesty. Time for a meeting.”

The distinct smell of steaks on a grill filled my nose.

I moved to the back of the group of leaders who gathered in a semi-circle facing D. He stood on the ramp of his track and said, “Thank you all for coming. I’m sure more than a few of you are confused about today’s action. Well let me clear that up. Winter’s coming and we’re heading South to stay ahead of it. In a week or two we’ll be on the equator and we’ll operate along it for a while, patrolling for Indigs. But for now we’ll harass the beefalo herd. That herd is their chow. Right now I’m sure the various groups of Indigs are getting reorganized and preparing to start their beefalo hunt. The more we mess with that herd, the harder their hunt will be.”

He removed his helmet and rubbed the top of his head. “I talked to one of the Frogs up in the sky, and I also spoke with Coyote, he’s up there now. There are no beefalo in the area sectored off for the Indigs by the French. The French are providing chow, and also trying to entice the Indigs to take up permanent residence in their orbital habitat. It doesn’t take a freaking genius to figure out the Frogs will withhold chow to make the Indigs more cooperative. So my plan has a little payback against the Frogs for screwing us over. We’ll push a large number of these beefalos right into the designated area so those Indigs can get to them. Questions?”

Captain Shuttler raised his hand. “Sir, what if some of the Indigs we’re hunting down follow the herd into the safe zone and then blend in with the Indigs there?”

Major D smiled. “‘Safe Zone.’ I like that. The Frogs call it a ‘Reservation’ and that’s a French word and I’m not trying to speak French any more than I have to. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what to call it. Thank you, Captain Shuttler. Now to answer your question. I’ll just say don’t be surprised if you find yourself with your back to the edge of the Safe Zone cutting down a large group of Indigs trying to get into it. But if they get in, we leave them alone. We’re following our contract to the letter. We will do nothing to jeopardize our dispute of it.”

Captain Shuttler nodded, looked down and folded his arms across his chest.

Major D said, “If there’s nothing else, go see the cooks. Tonight we eat steak!”

I went back to my tank and sent my crew to eat. I dug through data and found the most recent overhead view of the area of operations, sent down from the ship about three hours before. The indigs were not easy to spot. Some streaks of discoloration in the grassy plains may have been left by them, spread out to the south and southwest of the abandoned village. The smoke and fire of that place was clear on the image, the gray smoke of the grass fire spreading out in a reverse wedge that slowly dissipated to a slight haze farther away from its source. But one thing definitely stood out. The herd of beefalos. They were, collectively, a terrain feature all their own, and mobile. I zoomed out to where I could still distinguish them, looked around. Didn’t see any other herd. This was it.

I then read reports complied by the Frogs over the past three years, translated into Standard recently. It was hard to make sense of all of it, much of the meaning lost in translation. I had to read between the lines to figure out the most important information. There was no real proof, but I got the distinct impression that the Frogs had infested several herds with disease or killed them with poison, or both. Sure, there had to be several smaller groups out there, too small to make it practical to find with image scans from space. So this was it, the last of Tumbler’s large, free-range beefalo herds.

Caldwell
returned. “Sergeant Slaughter, you really need to get some of that steak.”

I stood, climbed down. “That good?” I’d had steak before.

She opened the auxiliary gunner’s hatch. “The best. You’ll see.”

“All right.” I shrugged. She dropped down inside the turret. I heard the little buzz of electronics being put trough built-in tests. I walked over to the chuck wagons and saw a line. Parks waved me over.

“We’re all lined up for seconds. You can cut to the front.”

“Thanks.” I went to the head of the line and the Trooper there stepped aside to let me pass.

The cook smiled and laid a two kilogram steak on a tray and handed it to me. He said, “You won’t be disappointed.”

I grabbed a knife and fork and a one liter mug of ale and looked for a spot to sit. These cooks knew their business, that’s for sure. I sat in a patch of undisturbed high grass, removed my helmet and ate alone. The steak was excellent. I set the tray and empty mug aside, lay on my back and took a nap.

Next morning we moved. I was in the back with my new independent tank platoon. Well, it was clearly Captain Blythe’s platoon but the tanks were mine. I’d been taking care of the ORFs for a long time. Even A-13, me and my crew spent more than a few hours assisting the mechanics, getting it back into full fighting form. Then we trained the crew. The tank commander was Corporal Williams, a stodgy woman who had been a tank driver on the Grinder contract and then switched to being an infantry fire team leader. The driver came from an IFV that had been destroyed. But the gunner, she was a cook. I felt that putting a cook in a tank was stupid; a waste of a perfectly good cook. The sort of people who volunteer for military service, those people can be trained and can achieve high levels of expertise in many of the arts of lethal combat, but cooks…to be a good cook takes something special, some sort of natural talent that can’t be taught. And it’s even more rare for someone interested in a military career to have those talents.

At the front of the columns on point were tanks HQ-1, HQ-3 and HQ-4. They formed the center of the wedge, with Charlie on the left and Bravo on the right. Those two companies had been reorganized into ten tanks each, a single tank for the Company Commander and three platoons of three tanks each. Two of the Bravo tanks still had Charlie bumper numbers, shifted over to Bravo to balance the units.

The task force neared its objective of a flat, open area and the center column stopped and then coiled in to a tight circle. My platoon stopped with it and took positions just outside the circle facing out. The two tank companies merged with the IFVs and made a skirmish line on each side facing out and the HQ tanks sealed off the far end. An area five hundred meters wide and two kilometers long was sealed off. The ten recovery vehicles used their front spades to scrape away at the surface, leveled it off and then ran over it to pack it down. Major D rode on a skimmer to inspect their work and then returned to his command post carrier.

Two drop boats came and landed on the improvised landing strip. Cargo trucks moved forward and loaded supplies off the drop boats and then the ambulances moved in and loaded injured troops onto the drop boats. Then the drop boats took off, back to the transport ship we had in orbit. Another boat landed. Eighteen skimmers came out of it and made their way to the support vehicles and parked facing out, filling in the wide gaps between my platoon’s three tanks. The skimmer crews parked their vehicles hull-down. One crewmember dismounted from each skimmer, left the driver and gunner on guard. The eighteen skimmer commanders made their way to Major D’s track.

The IFVs and tanks then moved back and formed a larger defensive circle around the support vehicles. I had no doubt in my mind that the Indigs had seen the boats, they’re hard to miss.

Captain Blythe called me, “Let’s go meet the new guys.”

“Roger.” I left Parks and Caldwell in the tank and walked with Captain Blythe and Corporal Williams to the command track. The new arrivals stood in a formation, three ranks of nine, and their leader center-front. They were all male, tall, broad shouldered and square-faced, stomach in, chest out. Their uniforms were pants and long-sleeve shirts, the sleeves rolled up squarely centered on the biceps. The coloring was green and brown digital splotches with a little gray here and there. They wore combat vests that wouldn’t stop a pointy stick but served to bear the load of their ammunition. Grenades, blocks of propellant for their caseless rounds, tubes of projectiles. They carried bull-pup machine pistols, hitched to their combat vests with tactical slings. As we approached, the Marine Lieutenant in front of the formation said to Captain Blythe, “Who the fuck are you?”

Blythe reached out with his left hand and rubbed his thumb over the pin-on Lieutenant rank on the Marine’s right collar. “I’m your superior officer; now who the fuck are you?”

“We’re Marines.”

Captain Blythe put his hands on his hips. “Marines come from the ocean. You come from space. You should call yourselves ‘Cosmos.’ ”

“You only fight on the ground. You should call yourselves ‘Dirt Bags.’ ”

Major D stepped between them. “Break it up. Okay, fall out in a half-circle here in front of me.”

Me and Blythe and Williams stepped back. The Marine Lieutenant executed an about face and gave the command, “Fall out, right here,” and pointed at the ground three meters in front of Major D. They did, their postures relaxed but in loose lines that could still be called a formation. Major Deskavich and the B and C commanders joined us.

D surveyed the crowd. “Okay, we’ve been joined by part of the ship’s security detachment. I understand there will be some cultural conflict but the benefits outweigh that. Lieutenant, come on up and introduce yourself.”

The Marine Lieutenant nearly body-slammed Major D, trying to take his spot, but checked himself just in time and stood to D’s left and looked at the group, blank-faced as his gaze swiveled past his Marines and then his face looked as though he’d just seen a pile of burning monkey crap as he looked at the mercenaries.

“I’m Lieutenant James Rock of the Third Recon Platoon of the Ninth Rifles of the Second Battalion, Second to None, of Brigade Five, Hard Chargers, Ninth Division of MARFARORBITAL Three South, Hoo Rah! We….”

He launched into a diatribe of quotes that seemed to have their origins in Sun Tsu’s ‘Art of War.’ I suppose he was finally tired of talking after two minutes.

He ended with, “…the Spirit will always defeat the Sword.”

Major D said, “Thank you for that enthusiastic introduction of yourself.”

The Marine stepped away and joined his fellows.

Major D said, “They will serve as our primary reconnaissance, replacing the Scouts. I invite everyone here before me to move through the chow line and sit together and get acquainted.” He looked the Marine Lieutenant dead in the eyes. “That’s an order.”

We went to the chuck wagon and were handed roast beefalo sandwiches and mugs of fruit punch. I sat with four Marines. One said to me, “Okay. Suppose you look over a hill and see the enemy and there are a hundred of them. You’re alone and have one ration and a knife and an entrenching tool. There are only five rounds left in your MP 1066. What do you do?”

I pointed at his weapon. “That’s an MP 1066?”

He nodded. “What do you do?”

I still didn’t have enough information to answer the question. What was the mission, the terms of the contract, all sorts of things were missing. No way to answer, really.

The Marine next to me slapped me on the back, “You decide how many prisoners you should take!”

They laughed, I smiled. Munched my sandwich. They said more Marine stuff and I nodded and smiled from time to time. They seemed to like me, as long as I didn’t say anything. I felt more at ease with the Indig scouts and wondered what Coyote was up to.

Finally a Marine asked me a direct question, “Throw down over?”

I didn’t understand so I just grunted.

He smiled and my group stood and we returned our trays and mugs to the chuck wagon. On my way back toward my tank I saw Captain Blythe.

“Hey, Sir. Enjoy lunch with the Marines?” I walked along with him.

“Not really. But they’re going to be out scouting for us so I guess I won’t see much of them.”

“I liked the real Scouts better.”

He shrugged. “These aren’t Scouts. They’re recon. Big difference.”

“Cosmos. That was pretty funny, Sir.”

“Well, they are from space, and they hang out on spacecraft. Not like the old saltwater Marines on Navy ships. The space fleet grew out of the old Terran Aerospace Force. Whole different culture.”

“Fleet troops. I guess they know their business.”

Captain Blythe split off to walk towards his tank. “They sure know how to run their mouths.”

I hooked a hard left and walked along behind the Marine skimmers toward my tank. Their gun was a swivel-mounted, belt-fed ten millimeter slug thrower mounted in the cargo area. The armor was thin and the non-ballistic windscreens were folded down flat. A great vehicle for those with a mission to observe and report. Not at all like our skimmers, with full crew protection behind medium armor and a medium laser cannon in a turret and a Gauss machine gun ball-mounted in the front hull for the vehicle commander to operate. God help the Marines if they picked a fight with Indigs in powered battle armor.

I saw that the Marines had Eliminator shotguns available, stowed in brackets inside their skimmers. Guess they’d be okay. I climbed back up in my tank and waited for the move order I knew would come soon.