Armored Tears (24 page)

"Converging
at 16.3 kilometers per second, sir!" the sensors operator whispered.

"Impossible!
Check again!" the commander snapped.

"Radar
confirms, sir! It's... it's coming at us on a retrograde orbit!" the
sensors operator exclaimed, realization striking.

"What?!"
shouted the executive officer.

"Begin
evasive maneuvers!" shouted the commander. "Time to
convergence?"

"118
seconds, sir," the sensors operator said, barely managing to speak above a
whisper.

"Not
enough!" the commander hissed. "Main engine burn! Full power! Get us
to a higher orbit!"

"We're
not oriented for a main engine burn," shouted the navigation officer.
 

"Then
orient us!"

"Orienting!"

The
thrum of the maneuvering thrusters sounded, loud enough to hear inside the
command sphere.

"We're
not going to make it!" the executive officer wailed.

"Weapons
officer!" the commander barked, "can you engage the inbound debris
with our laser?"

"What,
sir? Ah, I... that is, I can try. I don't have a clear target. There's no clear
target for the laser."

"Target
the largest piece of debris and burn it down!" the commander shouted.
"Navigator, can you maneuver us through a gap that our laser makes in the
debris field?"

"I...
but... but we're reorienting for main engine burn to a higher orbit, sir!"

"Never
mind that, Navigator!" the executive officer screamed, voice shrill.
"Do what the commander said!"
 

"I...
yes, sir!"

"No!"
screamed the commander. "Keep going with the orbit boosting
maneuver!"

"What?
Yes, sir!"

"Fifty
seconds to convergence," the sensors operator said softly.

Outside,
the OSV's main engine ignited, starting to push the
Yang Liwei
into a higher orbit. The engine noise made everything in
the command sphere vibrate slightly.

The
OSV had cleared about 60% of the diameter of debris cloud when its orbit
converged with the remains of the two Arcadian weather satellites. Dozens of
tiny fragments and six larger ones, massing a kilogram or more, struck the
Yang Liwei
.

The
OSV had been designed to survive hits from high energy lasers, and to shrug off
debris from nearby enemy targets destroyed by its own laser. The minor
fragments scoured the armored surface of the OSV, ripping away external sensors
and solar panels, but were unable to breach its hull. The major fragments were
a different matter. Against kilogram-mass fragments moving at more than 16
kilometers a second, the OSV's armor might as well have been aluminum foil.

The
OSV's structure exploded into a spray of alloy and composite confetti. Sensors,
laser arrays, radiator panels and solar panels all turned into a cloud of
expanding, glittering fragments. One fragment of debris, almost 2 kilograms in
mass, struck dead on to the command sphere, mercifully ending the screaming,
tumbling horror of the
Yang Liwei
's
crew.

Some
fragments of the OSV were kicked into higher orbits. Other fragments were
kicked down, to burn up over the empty seas of Arcadia is a spectacular shower
of glowing shooting stars.

***

By
the time the remains of the
Yang Liwei
came
around over the landmass of Arcadia, an hour later, there was only an expanding
cloud of debris for the Aerospace Corps telescopes to see.

Only
then did Major Newman and the Aerospace Corps technicians start cheering.
           

31.

Major
Anwar Hafez frowned as the reports from the front came in. His last push
towards the power facility had been stopped cold, and now, if his subordinates'
reports were to be believed, the numbers of Arcadian tanks facing his defenses
was increasing. His forces could keep them at bay with enough anti-tank
missiles and his remaining two tanks... but only if his people
had
enough missiles. The more tanks the
Arcadians brought forward, the harder it became to keep his surviving tanks out
of harm's way and the less defensive firepower per tank his infantry could
deploy. And if the Arcadians chose to accept casualties and push, his men would
quickly begin to run out of missiles.

And
now, there was even worse news; the suspected loss of the OSV
Yang Liwei
. If it was true —and
Hafez feared it was— then the UEN forces could no longer count on aerospace
superiority. The whole plan felt like it was beginning to unravel; an
unpleasant, disturbing feeling, Hafez thought.

"Captain,"
Hafez said to one of his aides, "I want you to go check again on the
progress our technical section is making with using the modular power source to
energize the gate again."

"Sir,
I've spoken with them. They insist that if it can be done at all, it would, at
best, generate enough power to open the gate for only a matter of seconds. Not
enough time to inform our forces on Earth to react to the opening by sending
reinforcements. And they tell me that there's a substantial chance the attempt,
succeed or fail, would cause a major explosion; the power unit could go off
like a bomb, they said."

Hafez
frowned again, but said nothing. He hated to be passive, on the defensive, but
it seemed that all that was left was to hope that Colonel Mbala would finally
arrive with the overwhelming forces he had at his disposal. That would put an
end to any danger from the Arcadians. But it was out of Hafez' hands.

"Very
well," he said at length. "Then get communications established with
Colonel Mbala, and tell him that he
must
push through more quickly."

Hafez
paused, frowned deeper still, as if contemplating something bitter.

"Tell
him our victory depends on his rapid arrival," Hafez said finally, looking
as if he wanted to spit the taste of his own words out of his mouth.

***

"Are
you
sure
?" General Stirling
asked, looking intently at the Aerospace Corps officer in front of him.
     

"We
can't be sure, sir," replied the Aerospace Corps colonel. "We got one
pass, and the sats we were using were weather birds, so their sensors weren't
made for tactical recon, but from what I saw, it's the way to bet."
           

"But...
how many launchers would it have taken the UEN?"

"Something
like two dozen big ones, at least."
           

"So
your 'ghost' crew was right," Stirling said, softly. "Twenty-three
cargo ships. My god."

"Sir,"
interjected McMaster, the Armored Corps colonel, "if it
is
true, we have to reinforce O'Connor's
battalion. If they break past her, they'll ram right into the rear of our forces
holding the power and control facilities. We've been concentrating against the
gate; our position at the facilities can't handle a major force of enemy armor.
Besides which, even if we get our units reoriented, it'll take more forces to
hold them on the open flat lands than in the highlands."

"You're
right," General Stirling said. "Scrape up as much as you can spare
without compromising our advance on the gate facility and send it to reinforce
those highlands as fast as you can."

"I
just hope there's still someone there to reinforce," the Armored Corps
colonel said softly.

***

What
was left of the battalion was as ready as Tara could make it. The resumption of
short-wave communication with Command was a relief, but the news they gave her
wasn't. Two more battalions of UEN tanks were on their way, to try to smash
aside what was left of her one, battered battalion.

And
she had to stop them. The fight for the gate was slowly turning to the
Arcadians' favor, but if the forces she was holding back made it through the
Isthmus Highlands and plowed into the back of the units fighting to take back
the gate...

It
all always came down to the gate, Tara thought. It felt almost like a
nightmare, fighting for the damned gate again. Didn't we bleed and suffer
enough for it the last time? Didn't we? Didn't I?

But
there was no point to that sort of thinking. The enemy was coming, and her
forces had to hold. That was all.

There
was a little time, according to Command, and Tara planned to use it to walk
from tank to tank, and talk to her people face to face.

A
snippet of Shakespeare suddenly occurred to her; Henry V; not at
all
her usual entertainment, but it had
been required reading at the Armored Corps Officer School. There had been a
prologue, where the titular king had walked around talking to his men before a
desperate battle; "A little touch of Harry in the night."

Well,
she was no king, this wasn't the battle of Agincourt, and it wasn't yet night.
But hopefully her people would think that a little touch of "Legs"
would do more good than harm.

Some
of her people had problems, and some of those, she could even solve.

"Had
to send Wilkerson to the aid station, Colonel," one of her own platoon's
tank commanders, a sergeant named Hall, told her when she checked with him.

"Wilkerson...
your sensors operator?" Tara asked.

"Yeah.
He got a whack on the head when we took a hit. Holy shit, it rocked us. Armor held,
though. But after the fight, when he got out of the tank, he started getting
dizzy... vomiting and stuff. I had to order him to head back there," the
sergeant said, jerking a finger over his shoulder in the rough direction of
where the aid station had been set up, near the laser installation.

"Did
you get a replacement yet from crews who made it out of one of the knocked out
tanks?" Tara asked.

"Nah,"
the sergeant said. "Most of 'em are banged up, or else they're working
hard at the aid station. And anyway, there's no transport right now; one of the
utils is down with a mechanical fault, one got wrecked in the last fight; enemy
shot hit close enough that the debris spray wrecked it... and the last one's up
at the aid station right now. The support section's got those frame infantry
guys helping carry people to the aid station now. Turns out framers are good
for something after all," he added with a grim smile.

"I'd
roll the tank back there," he went on, "but that'd mean breaking
concealment, so that's a no-go. And it's a bit too far to walk; be a bit
embarrassing to be hiking on back there when the pissers show up again."

"True,
that," Tara said with a grim smile of own.

"But
I figure I can run the sensors myself, from the commander's station," the
sergeant told her. "It's not like the pissers are making themselves hard
to find..."

"Colonel,
excuse me," an unfamiliar voice called to Tara as she walked, trying to
think of some way to get a replacement crewmember to Sergeant Hall's tank.
 

She
turned and found herself looking at a good-looking if somewhat haggard looking
man in civilian dress; this must be the Earther reporter, she realized.

"Mr..."
Tara said, and then paused. "I don't know your name, sorry."

"Aran
Hogan," the man replied. "I just wanted to know if there was any way
I could help."

"Help?
You're a UEN civilian, aren't you?"

"Well...
I'm a civilian, anyway. I'm... well, let's say Australian. Pacific Alliance.
Not really UEN. Especially not now. I... I can do some things. I can lift and
carry, at any rate. And I know drones. I mean, mostly civilian models, but I've
run series 70 Japanese drones, too. More than once."

"We
use modified series 70s..." Tara said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone,
looking at Aran with narrowed eyes.

Aran
nodded. "I saw. That's why I mentioned it," he said.

"Are
you
volunteering
, Mr. Hogan?"
Tara asked, meeting the man's eyes.

Aran
paused for a long second.

"Yes,"
he said, taking a deep breath. "Yes, I am,"

Now
it was Tara's turn to be silent for a moment.

"Very
well, Hogan. I could call you something silly like 'provisional recruit,' but
I'll skip it, if it's all the same with you. I could make noise about what
happens if you try to betray us, too. But somehow, I think I'll skip that too.

"You
say know drones? Well, I've got a tank with no sensors operator. Let's see if
you're better than nothing, Hogan."

***

"So
you're our new sensors operator?" asked a wiry-looking man with coal-black
skin and flat, haunted-looking eyes.

"I
think so... sir... Sergeant," Aran added, noticing the three stripes on
the man's jumpsuit sleeve. "I know the Series 70 drones, at any
rate," he added.

"Boss
says you're a civvie who volunteered," the man said, his tone utterly
flat.

"That's
right, sir."

"Just
'sergeant,'" the man said. "I'm Hall. Sergeant Wayne Hall. I run #3
tank, 1st platoon, 1st company. What are you called, civvie?"

"Aran,
Sergeant. Aran Silaban Hogan... but just Aran is best."

"OK,
Aran. You can't do the whole sensors operator's job, but I guess you can watch
a screen, and if you know drones, well, we have some drones left that it would
be nice if we could use. And let's face it; we're desperate.

"So
welcome to the tank."

***

Tara
kept walking. The men and women she'd spoken to all sounded... ready,
confident, and fake. Fake bravado, masking real fear and real courage. She'd
seen it before. Felt it before. Hell, she was feeling it now, and feeding it to
her people. Did they even believe her? Or did they see the fear and fake
bravado as clearly as she did?

The
burned-out tanks loomed in the slanting afternoon shadows. It should be dark,
she thought. It felt like it should be night. So much tiredness, so much weary
pain, so it should have been night. It felt off, somehow, to be so tired, and
so resigned, with the huge orange sun still riding in a blue sky overhead.

The
burned out tanks mocked her, some of them. A few were obvious wrecks, but
others looked almost intact, as if they could come to life and fight. As if
their crews weren't burned to a crisp or blown to bloody chunks inside their
turrets.

Suddenly
she stopped and blinked.

"Decoys,"
she said to herself. "Decoys..."

They
could use the dead tanks as decoys! If they rigged them with some smoke
grenades, and working laser range finders; the framers would have some of those
on their weapons... might even have some spares. An enemy tank that saw one of
the more intact hulks wouldn't be sure if they were looking at a dead tank or
not. And if the "dead" tank suddenly popped smoke, or started hitting
them with a ranging laser, they'd
know
it wasn't dead. They engage it. They'd waste their fire against tanks that were
already dead, and make themselves targets for her surviving tanks!

"Feldman!
Younger!" she shouted into her portable comm. "I got an idea! We've
got some work to do!"

***

"You
got your drivers and gunners familiar with the new fallback positions,
Younger?" Tara asked.

The
big captain nodded.

"Everyone
has the weak spots for the T-66 loaded into their gunnery computers?"

"Yes,
Boss," Younger said.

They
had sent people up to the nearest knocked out T-66s and looked, really looked,
at the shape and angle of the armor. Most tanks had weak spots; inevitable
shot-traps, or places where the shape of the tank meant that the armor couldn't
present the optimal angle or slope to an inbound round. An hour's careful
looking around had given them a good clue where the new enemy tanks were most
vulnerable.

"And
the decoys? Are the decoys in your sector are set up?" Tara asked.

Younger
nodded. He looked, she thought, as if he were made of stone, elemental,
unbreakable, but eroded.
  

"We
got it, Legs," he said, in a voice gone soft. "We got it."

"I
know," she said. "I'm counting on it. On you. Your people, your
company... they're doing real good. Those kids... they're doing real
good."
         

Younger
was looking down, shaking his head, his voice gone soft and slow.