Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (32 page)

“Can’t stand
to look at the fool,” said Johnson, “that’s all it is.”

“I appreciate
the sentiment,” said Steiner, “but can you throw your own food instead of
mine?  I’m still hungry.”

“Hungry? 
You should be honoured I’m throwing your food.  It’s your patriotic
duty.  You’re always thinking of yourself, Steiner.  How about giving
something up for Uncle Sam?”

“I’ve given
Uncle Sam plenty.  The cakes are mine.”

Johnson gave
him a sideways look.  “I never trusted you, man,” he said in mock
seriousness.  “Anyone who puts his love of cakes over the love of his
country is suspect to me.  Maybe I should kick your ass before I kick
his,” he said, nodding towards the screen.  The streams moved on to some
other news and Steiner, Foley and Johnson went back to their eating.

They had been
training now for weeks.  They had spent hour upon hour in the IVRs and as
much time again physically training in the gym.  The Martian template for
the IVRs had been massively useful.  The lower gravity had many effects
which they hadn’t considered.  The parabola of any ballistic weapon was a
significantly different shape due to the lower gravity.  It took a long
time to get used to their munitions acting differently.  Atmospheric
pressure was much lower on the Martian surface too, again affecting their
shells and missiles.  They had to relearn the way they aimed.  The
command drones themselves were a little sprightlier in Martian simulation
since, in effect, they were nearly two-thirds lighter than they would be
on the surface of the Earth.

Though it
seemed difficult at first (Johnson in particular was worried that he was
unlearning many years’ worth of highly
commodifiable
experience) they had settled in to the Martian training and now felt as
comfortable fighting on the surface of the virtual Mars as they had on the
battlefields of Earth.  Venkdt Corporation had provided very detailed
models of their facilities on Mars and their own brass had provided many
scenarios for them to train in.

They had
trained at capturing Venkdt facilities on the surface of the planet.  Some
of the remote facilities were comprised of just a few buildings. 
Capturing them consisted mostly of walking up to them and finding a way in. 
Threatening the personnel with massive armed violence and persuading them to
allow access seemed to be a very successful tactic in these scenarios.

Venkdt
facilities in the big conurbation of Marineris could be captured the same
way.  Here there was more scope for demonstrating firepower.  They
knew which facilities should be unmanned and they had scanners to help confirm
empty buildings.  Such buildings could then be spectacularly destroyed,
concentrating the minds of the enemy.

At first they
had run simulations as close to what they were expecting as possible, which was
absolutely no armed resistance.  There was a security service on Mars but
their arms were limited to rifles and pistols.  Compared to the armoury
available to a commander that might as well have been no arms at all. 
After a few weeks of training the exercises all seemed to boil down to the same
thing; wandering up to the target, being threatening, and then being let in the
front door.

Part of the
ethos of the Commander Program was to be ready for anything.  Anticipating
the unexpected and exploring every possible avenue the enemy may pursue against
you was ingrained into every commander.  As such, and at least in part to
relieve the boredom, they had recently begun running simulations with a well-armed
Martian resistance.  These simulations had proved more of a challenge, but
not by much.  They had been useful because they had forced the commanders
to think more tactically about their approaches and to focus more closely on
the buildings and landscapes available to them.  But the end result of
these simulations had been the same; fast and total victory.

All the hours
of training in the IVRs had taught them some fundamentals about what to expect
on Mars when they arrived in theatre.  It had taught them that the
atmosphere and gravity on Mars were not the same as they were on Earth. 
It had taught them to adjust their aim to compensate for the limited resistance
and weaker pull of gravity.  It had given them intimate knowledge of the
layout of some of the buildings they might be likely to attack.  But most
of all it had taught them that victory would be fast and total.  That much
they did not question.

Steiner was
casually destroying a warehouse when his simulation was interrupted by a message
from
Soward
.

“All
commanders, please stop your simulations.”

Steiner
stopped immediately but
Soward
paused for a few
seconds.  He assumed others, perhaps at more complex moments in their
simulations, had needed time to finish up.

“All
commanders please be advised that we will be shipping out for
Ephialtes
and
Otus
this coming Saturday at 06:00 hours.”

Steiner spoke
into his com, which was patched through to Foley and Johnson.  “Get some!”
he said.

“Squads A
through G are assigned to
Ephialtes
.  Squads H through N are going
to
Otus
.  Make sure you have your shit
squared away and are ready to pull out first thing Saturday morning.  That
is all.” 
Soward’s
voice disappeared as quickly
as it had arrived.

“Up and
away,” Foley’s voice came over the com.

“Do we get a
pass between now and then?” said Johnson.  “Once we’re up there a pass
ain’t
gonna
do us any good. 
And we’re
gonna
be up there for months.”

“Up to
Connor, I guess,” said Steiner.

“That’s a no
then,” said Foley.

“Damn!” said
Johnson.  “I need my pass.  I’m nearly stir crazy from being in this
place.  God knows what it’s
gonna
be like up
there.  I need a pass.  We all need a pass, any fool know that.”

Steiner began
to climb out of his IVR unit.  “So we’ve got
Ephialtes
,” he said,
“and a free trip to Mars thrown in too.”  He had just finished climbing
down the ladder when Foley opened his hatch.

“I heard it’s
pretty nice up there,” he shouted down.  “A friend of mine said it’s like
a five star hotel.  Though I doubt he’s ever actually been in a five star
hotel.  Anyways, he said it was pretty good.”

“That’s
right,” said Steiner, “it’s a good gig, or it was.  The guys we’re
replacing just had to float around the world playing pool and watching videos,
waiting for the phone to ring, which it was never going to.  It might be
comfortable but we’ve got a very different mission.  We’re covering the
best part of a billion miles and we might have to do some actual fighting
somewhere along the way.”

“Bullshit,”
said Foley.  “This is just a policing action.  Think of it like an
ocean cruise.  And anyway, we’ve just done the hard part.”  He
slapped the side of his IVR twice.  “From now on it will be piña coladas
all the way to Mars and back.  And on double pay, too.”

Johnson was
also clambering down.  “You’re a damn fool, you know that, don’t you?” he
said to Foley.  “There
ain’t
no easy jobs in the
army.  It wouldn’t surprise me if this was some sort of a set up. 
Like they’ve got some other plan for us once we get there.  No easy jobs
in the army.”

“It must be
tiring being so jaundiced all the time,” said Steiner.  “You need to get
into the party mood like me and Foley here.  If you’re just going to be
grumpy the whole time we might not even take you with us.”

“That’s
funny, fool,” said Johnson, “but I’m telling you the army don’t do nothing the
easy way, and there
ain’t
no easy jobs in the
army.  If you two think this is going to be an easy tour then I just about
know for sure that’s exactly what it
ain’t
gonna
to be.  I need a pass.”

They walked together
towards the changing area.

“What would
you do with a pass anyway,” said Steiner, “meet up with the local crochet
circle?”

“You know
exactly what I’d do, friend,” said Johnson, “and it don’t involve no goddamned
crochet.”

“So,
Ephialtes
,”
said Foley, absentmindedly.

“
Ephialtes
,”
repeated Steiner.  “That’s going to be home for the next few months.”

“I like the
sound of it,” said Foley.  “It kind of rolls off the tongue,
Ephialtes
.”

“Sounds like
a bullshit name to me,” said Johnson.  “I like them proper names, like
Vengeance
or
Predator
or
Invincible
.  That’s the sort of thing a
warship should be called.”

“I don’t
know,” said Steiner.  “
Ephialtes
.  Sounds good to me.”

Kostovich had
incredible amounts of data relating to the USAN’s military capability and
equipment.  He had taken their missile technology and adapted it into a
system that was suitable for Mars and could be built quickly and cheaply. 
That system was well on the way to production.  Parts were being
fabricated and assembled already.  Four designated sites had been selected
north, east, south and west of the city and they were being prepared to accept
the installations.  Building contractors were laying the foundations to
Kostovich’s precise specifications.  They would start taking the
prefabricated units of the missile batteries as soon as they were ready. 
They would be ready soon.

The system
was run remotely, controlled by software distributed around the Martian network. 
It was very resistant to cyber-attack.  The physical system was
somewhat resistant through redundancy; its four separate geographical locations
covered widely overlapping areas.  Each battery, to some degree, covered
the others and they all covered the main Martian city of Marineris.

Unlike Askel
Lund, Kostovich was hands off in his overseeing of the building of his great
defence system.  He made the plans, which were precise and exquisitely
detailed, then fired them off to engineers, builders and subcontractors. 
He kept his mind very much in the theoretical space and left the real world to
others.

As soon as
plans were completed for the
planetside
missile
batteries
Kostovich
turned his attention to the
orbiting platform.  The missile batteries on the planet were basically
scaled down versions of plans stolen from the USAN.  The orbiting
platform, however, was different.  For this one he had to design the
platform from start to finish.  He had set his AIs to the task and had
overseen what they produced.  He made tweaks and suggestions and read them
back into the AIs and refined them again and again.  The platform had to
be designed such that the separate parts could be transported into orbit and
assembled there.  That made the task more difficult, but Kostovich and his
AIs had found a way.  The final design required more than six launches and
major construction in orbit.  For this Kostovich had adapted one of the
USAN’s designs for an advanced construction drone.  Two of these would be
charged with assembling the prefabricated parts.

Fabrication
of the orbiting missile platform parts had taken many weeks and there were
further delays due to the limited number of available flights into orbit. 
But it was coming together now.  The orbiting platform was actually
starting to look like an orbiting platform rather than disparate lumps of metal
floating in roughly similar orbits.  As ever, Kostovich observed from
afar.  He gave extensive notes to the contractors charged with making them
a reality.  Everything was proceeding well.

With the
missile batteries project in hand Kostovich was able to turn his attention to
the smaller items on his to-do list.  He had been charged with
arming a new army.  Not only a new army, but a new army in a circumstance
previously unknown to human warfare.  He had picked through the USAN’s
designs and decided on a few fundamental pieces of equipment the army would
need.  Martian infantry would need a workhorse weapon that could be
quickly and easily manufactured and used just as easily.  For that, he
selected the USAN plasma rifle.  He made minimal tweaks, mainly due to the
limited availability on Mars of some of the required precious metals.  He
found suitable substitutes.  He thought a Martian army would need at least
one form of armoured transport.  By melding together two USAN designs he
came up with an armoured troop carrier with a mounted plasma cannon.  He
tweaked the design of the cannon such that he doubled its power, making it a
truly formidable weapon.  Again, he streamlined the production process to
make it easier to manufacture on Mars, and got his design to the fabrication
plants as soon as possible.

The uniform,
he thought, needed to be light, practical and armoured.  The USAN had very
recently made some interesting advances in lightweight armour.  He had
looked at those and then integrated the armour design into a standard military
battledress.  He was working on the designs because of his technical
knowledge and understood that the uniform, above all else, had to be a practical
thing.  However, as someone who had grown up playing IVR battle games he
couldn’t resist tinkering with some of the cosmetic aspects of the uniform
design.  He gave the Martian battledress a subtle desert camouflage. 
The colours were rusty brown and a lighter brown, similar to the colours found
on most of the Martian surface.  He chose what he thought were impressive
crests for various ranks.  The crests contained long distance RFID
identification markers so that any Martian troops could be instantly identified
on the field of battle.

His design
for the Martian trooper’s helmet included a head-up display which
overlaid real-time information on the world.  The LDRFIDs constantly
fed back to a huge battlefield model, which in turn fed the information back
from the model to the troops on the field.  This meant that, for example,
a trooper on the field would be able to see all of his comrades, whether he had
line of sight or not.  If they walked behind a building his head-up
display would superimpose exactly where they were over his vision of the real
world, just as if he could see them through the building.  All friendly
troops, and where possible friendly buildings and civilians, would be marked as
such by means of a faint green glow.  Enemy structures, transports and
troops would conversely be marked with a glowing red outline.

Coms were
similarly enhanced by tracking technology which transmitted any given
communication to the comrade the trooper was looking at.  Extremely
sophisticated heuristic algorithms would analyse the content of the
communication in its situational context, together with other battlefield
variables, to decide whom the communication might be most useful to.  It
would then route it to them.  If a trooper were to say, ‘Look out for that
sniper’, for example, the algorithm would figure out, from where the trooper
was on the battlefield and what direction she was looking, where the sniper
was.  It would then figure out what area the sniper was covering and
compare that to where other troopers were moving.  If it thought any
troopers were likely to move into the area covered by the sniper it would route
that particular communication to them.  It would also send a visual cue to
their head-up displays, showing where the sniper was and what areas he
had covered.

The AI
running the battle model was the great arbiter of who should know what, where
and when.  Too much information on the battlefield could be as dangerous
as too little.  The AI could filter out orders or information that was
irrelevant.  The battle model AI’s job was to see that the troopers got
the information they needed and no other distractions.  It was something
Kostovich was particularly proud of.

Plasma
rifles, uniforms, light artillery and helmets had all recently gone into production. 
Kostovich had prototypes of the basic military kit in his office.  He was
expecting to take delivery of the first large production batches very soon.

Venkdt had given
Kostovich a number of warehouse facilities to store the kit as it came off the
production line.  Warehouse 63 had previously been used for storing some
of the goods the Martians had been selling to Earth.  That hadn’t been a
great success.  The huge cost of transportation to Earth had made the
endeavour risky to start with.  Though Venkdt Mars had been able to come
up with some advanced designs for consumer goods it hadn’t really made economic
sense to produce them on the planet.  Raw materials were the truly
valuable commodity that Mars produced.  That failure had worked out for
Kostovich.  It meant he had this huge warehouse and it was now being
filled with equipment he’d designed and adapted.  He was going to be the
first, and best, quartermaster of the Martian army.  It was a job he
relished.  He usually stayed away from any jobs that involved being around
other people but he wanted to be there for this one.

He had called
Maya a few days before and arranged a time.  He knew that, strictly
speaking, he should have involved Maya in the design process - that’s
what Venkdt had asked for - but he had managed to wriggle out
of it.  He thought that when you started asking people what they wanted
they would overthink things and make them too complex.  It was wise of
him, he supposed, to simply go ahead and do what he thought was best.  It
made sense to him.  After all, this new equipment was at least equivalent
to what the USAN Army had and at the moment it looked like they were the only
plausible enemies Mars might have.  Even that seemed fanciful but it would
be good, if the USAN Army did make it across the hundred and forty thousand
miles of space between them, to be able to match them with a force equipped to
the same standard.

He had asked
Maya to come to the warehouse bringing as many of her MSS personnel with her as
possible.  He planned to kit them out there and then.

He sat in the
control room and watched as four forklift drones unloaded transports of
container and piled them up to one side of the warehouse.  These were the
plasma rifles.  Other sections of the warehouse already had their boxes of
uniforms, body armour, advanced communication equipment and helmets.  He
felt at that moment like a martial Father Christmas.

He had spoken
to Maya a few times on his comdev but had yet to meet her in person.  He
was looking forward to it.  Her strength and directness appealed to him
and he hoped that she might be impressed with everything he had done for her.

A few minutes
before the agreed time he went down to the floor of the warehouse.  He was
wearing a hard hat, as required, but he ignored the audible warnings that were
triggered by his entrance onto the warehouse floor.  He had arranged for
Maya and her troops to arrive via one of the loading bays.  He was
expecting it to be impressive, maybe two or three transports filled with poorly
equipped and slightly bemused security personnel, who had suddenly, somehow,
found themselves in an army.  He would shower them with brand new super up-to-date
equipment and send them back out as the defenders of Mars.  He smiled at
the thought.

He had been
there a few minutes when an alarm bell rang out and yellow lights started
flashing, signalling that one of the big bay doors was about to open.  He
had sent security clearance to Maya.  Her comdev was all she would need to
open the door.  It had to be her.

Slowly, the
huge door started to lower into the ground.  At first Kostovich could only
see the lights in the ceiling of the tunnel beyond, but as the door got lower
it revealed the first transport then others behind it.  He walked towards
them.  He could see that the driver had assumed she would be coming into
the warehouse.  She had not expected it to be as full as it was.  She
looked to Foveaux, sat to her right, as if asking what she should do now, but
Foveaux was already climbing down from the cabin and walking over to meet
Kostovich, hand outstretched.

“You must be
Kostovich,” she said.

“You must be
Commissioner Foveaux,” said Kostovich.  “Please, come this way.  I think
the easiest way to do this, for the uniforms, helmets and rifles, anyway, would
be for your troops to just get kitted up right here.  What do you think?”

“Sounds good
to me,” said Foveaux.  “What have you got for us?”

“Everything I
said I would in the documentation I sent over.  It’s all here.”

“Everything?”

“Some of the
field artillery is still being fabricated, and the armoured transports,
too.  But all the stuff for your troopers is right here.”

“That’s
great,” said Foveaux.  “Where do you want us?”

“Uh, I guess
if you start forming a queue here,” he gestured to a pile of crates. 
“These are the basic uniforms.  I’ve had the forklifts make various piles
down there.  This is uniforms, next pile on is boots, beyond that is
helmets, beyond that is rifles and so on down the line.  I guess the
easiest thing is for people to work their way down the line picking stuff up as
they go.”

“Very good,”
said Foveaux, “I’ll get them out of the transports.”  She spoke into her
comdev and the transports started emptying into the warehouse.  Her troops
slowly coalesced into a line in front of the first pile of crates.  The
two troops at the front of the queue looked expectantly at Kostovich as if he
was going to help them.

Kostovich
gestured at the crates.  “Go ahead,” he said, “
it’s
self-service.”

The two
troopers looked at each other somewhat disappointedly, but moved forward and
opened the first crate.  They pulled out uniforms, rummaging through
looking for the right sizes.  They scoured labels and held the uniforms up
to themselves until they were satisfied.  They took the uniforms and moved
to the next pile.  Two more troopers stepped forward to take their
places.  Seeing that the system, crude as it was, appeared to be working
Kostovich spoke to Foveaux.  “I thought you would be first in the queue,”
he said.