Steel Gauntlet (10 page)

The tankers had to throw in the hat; the battlefield belonged to the infantry again.

At this point Moeller paused and looked at the rapt Marines for a long moment before continuing.

“The real problem with using the Straight Arrow for anything other than an M1D7 Super Abrams is that, to be triggered, the arming mechanism in the warhead requires a high level of resistance. When our engineers tried to engineer it down to more easily explode, it wouldn’t work correctly. Munitions experts found that they weren’t even effective against buildings; they simply go in one side and out the other and wreak havoc on anything they encounter along the way—but they don’t explode. So, the M-72 Straight Arrow, the relatively inexpensive weapon that sounded the death knell of armor, cannot, at present, be used against anything other than the one weapon it was designed to defeat.

“The Straight Arrow is back in production, but I think you’re only going to get a relative few of them for this mission,” Moeller explained. “The intelligence reports we’ve received indicate that there are very few tanks on Diamunde with heavy enough armor to justify their use....” He paused because he didn’t like what he was about to say. “Instead, you’re mostly going to be using other antitank weapons, weapons that aren’t as powerful as the Straight Arrows. When I left Headquarters Marine Corps on Earth to come here, the civilian contractors maufacturing the M-72s were getting orders to build other antiarmor weapons as well. A small supply should arrive in a few days and you’ll begin training with them.”

He checked the time. “Starting in an hour or so, right after evening chow, I’ll begin teaching you about the other types of armor you might run into on Diamunde. Then, beginning tomorrow morning, you’ll start training in the virtual reality simulator that a team from HQMC has been developing over the past couple of weeks.” He shook his head. “That’s when you’ll find out that no matter how vulnerable to infantry weapons tanks are, they are still tough and dangerous opponents.” Actually, when Gunner Moeller left Earth for Thorsfinni’s World, nobody had any idea of what kind of tanks the Marines would face on Diamunde, or what kinds of weapons they’d be given to kill them with.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” Corporal Keto shouted into his helmet radio.

Lance Corporal “Rat” Linsman smacked the back of Claypoole’s helmet. “You need your beauty rest, Sleeping Beauty?” He didn’t bother with the radio, he shouted directly into Claypoole’s ear.

Claypoole jumped, then peered around. “What?” He sounded groggy. After only four hours’ sleep, the company had been given a three-hour orientation on the kinds of weapons they would be using in the VR simulator, then second squad had to wait outside two hours before its turn in the simulator. After two weeks of too little sleep, that wait was taking its toll on the Marines.

“You’ve got a target, sweetheart,” Linsman snarled.

“Azimuth, zero-two-seven,” Keto said calmly, now that he knew his shooter was awake. “Range, two-seven-five-zero. Target, low-rider, sitting. Mark?”

Claypoole shifted the launcher tube on his shoulder and squinted through its eyepiece at the battle-blasted landscape. Red-fringed clouds, reflecting the burning of vehicles and buildings on the ground, drifted low overhead. He noted the compass reading on the left side of the image and scuttled around to point himself in the right direction. Then he checked the range indicator on the right side of the image and looked straight ahead. Something was out there beyond the splintered trees in his field of vision, but he couldn’t quite make it out. He groped for the image magnification tab on the left side of the launcher’s receiver, just forward of his face. Magnification jumped from one-to-one to six-to-one and he saw the target. The low-rider tank was hardly higher than a standing man. It was long, low, and wide, and had sides that sloped shallowly. In outline, it somewhat resembled an upturned serving platter. Its low profile was supposed to make it a more difficult target for direct-fire weapons. The shallow slopes of its sides were supposed to make rockets ricochet off rather than penetrate. Neither of those design factors should protect it from the M-83 Falcon, a fire-and-forget rocket. The shooter locked on a spot on the target, then fired. The rocket would maintain a course to that spot no matter how violently the target maneuvered. Five hundred meters from the target it would jump up 250 meters and dive down at an acute angle to hit the armor flush.

“Mark,” Claypoole said. The tank’s angle to Claypoole was slightly closer to full front than broadside.

He picked a point on the front of the tank and depressed the lock-on-target button. “Fire when ready,” Keto said.

Claypoole’s right eye flicked to the sides of his aiming image to verify the azimuth and range, looked back at his marking spot on the tank, and then he pulled the trigger. Next to his ear the launcher boomed, then it bucked on his shoulder. He watched the rocket as it sped downrange. After two seconds its motor cut off and all he could see of it was a dark blur centered in his magnified sight. He estimated the rocket was halfway to its target when the low-rider turned and began speeding toward them. The rocket immediately began flashing with quick jet pulses as it adjusted its course to maintain its lock on the target.

Abruptly, there was a brilliant flash and the rocket shot upward briefly before another brilliant flash sent it plunging downward.

Claypoole wouldn’t have believed he could hear the spang of a ricochet at a distance of more than two kilometers. The rocket bounced harmlessly away to the front of the low-rider. He closed his eyes and groaned.

Keto sighed loudly into his radio.

Claypoole flinched in anticipation of a slap on the back of his helmet from Linsman.

The slap didn’t come. Instead Linsman said, “I always thought you didn’t like me, rock head. I just never thought you didn’t like me that much.”

“What do you mean?”

“You just killed me.”

“Huh?”

Before Linsman could reply, there was a dazzling flash of light, a boom! crashed over them, and the floor of the VR chamber shook violently.

“Third fire team, second squad, you’re dead,” Gunner Moeller’s amplified voice said. “Move off the firing line and return to the briefing room.”

Sheepishly, Claypoole stood up. He left the launch simulator in place for the next fire team. He blinked as the landscape he stood in vanished and his eyes adjusted to the bare walls of a room less than ten meters on a side.

Linsman glared at him. Keto had nothing to say—but Claypoole knew he’d have a lot to say later on, when the two of them were alone. The two lance corporals followed their fire team leader out of the simulation chamber, through the door next to the observation window, behind which Gunner Moeller had watched along with Captain Conorado, Gunny Thatcher, Ensign Vanden Hoyt, and Staff Sergeant Bass.

Claypoole felt terrible; he’d messed up badly but didn’t know what he’d done wrong.

A moment later they were in the briefing room, and the five senior Marines from the observation room joined them.

“Do you know what you did wrong?” Gunner Moeller asked as Bass closed the door behind him.

“No sir.” Claypoole swallowed.

“Either of you know?” Moeller asked the other two. They shook their heads. “You picked the wrong part of the target to shoot at. It looked like the right part, but it was the wrong part. You see, when I told you how the Falcons defeat low-riders and how the low-rider configuration was no defense against the Falcon, I didn’t tell you the defensive tactic low-riders use to defeat the Falcon.” He looked at Keto and Linsman. “Don’t blame him, you probably would have made the same mistake.” Linsman glanced at Keto, but the corporal nodded at the gunner; he was beginning to get it.

Moeller turned his attention back to Claypoole. “I firmly believe that mistakes are an important part of learning. And I’d rather have you make them in a VR simulator, where the worst that will happen is you’ll feel dumb, than in combat, where you’ll probably get yourself and your teammates killed.

“I very deliberately had the low-rider situated so you had a clearer shot at its front armor than its side, and you took the bait. The only defense a low-rider has against a Falcon is to charge in the direction it’s coming from. If the Falcon doesn’t make its course adjustments quickly enough, as it didn’t this time, it will be coming down at the low-rider from behind when it hits. If its aiming point is on front of the glacis, it’ll ricochet off. If you’d aimed at the side, the chances are better than even that it would have hit at an acute enough angle to do its job. Maybe even before the low-rider got into range to fire its own gun.” He looked at Linsman. “As you saw, it didn’t take the low-rider long to close the gap to where it could hit you on its first shot.” He looked at Keto. “When you fire at range like that, you have to move immediately. Most tanks have targeting computers that can locate where a threat is coming from before the threat reaches the tank, identify what kind of threat, and immediately begin calculating what its best defense is and where it has to get to in order to effectively respond to the threat.

“Incidentally, some of the other teams that shot before you didn’t even manage to get the ricochet.

You’re the sixth team from this platoon to shoot so far. Only one of the others got a kill. You didn’t do badly.”

So it went for three more days. Every time a fire team entered the VR chamber, they used a different kind of tank-killer weapon. Each time they faced a different type of tank design. They were never told in advance what kind of tank they’d face, or the defensive tactics it used against the weapon they were using. There was a lot of trial and error. Mostly error. The one lesson they all learned in a hurry was to relocate as soon as they fired.

“We know what kind of tanks St. Cyr used when he attacked the Confederation embassy and took New Kimberly, but we don’t know everything he has,” Gunner Moeller said, explaining why they were training against so many different armor configurations. “When I left Earth, we’d gotten some reports of other tank types being used elsewhere on Diamunde. And I’ve got you training on every type of antiarmor weapon we’ve got in storage because nobody had decided what kind—or kinds—would be ready for this operation. You need to be ready to use any weapon available to kill any kind of tank you might run into.”

After four days in the VR chamber with everyone continuing to make mistakes, Captain Conorado stood the company down for twenty-four hours to get some sleep.

“When do we get the real ones?” Schultz grumbled. After ten solid hours of sleep he looked like a bear coming out of hibernation. He acted like one too.

“As long as we get the real ones before we go up against real tanks, I don’t care,” Dean said. He’d been awake for half an hour but still hadn’t stirred from his rack. The feeling of getting enough sleep was so luxurious that he didn’t want to move if he didn’t have to.

Corporal Leach, their fire team leader, was already up and dressing. He paused in pulling on his boots to listen. He knew the importance of using the real weapons, and wanted to hear how Schultz would explain it to Dean.

Schultz sat on his rack with his forearms resting on his thighs and his head lolling. He rolled his eyes toward Dean and cast him a “you’re too dumb to live” look. His voice rumbled out from somewhere deep inside his mass. “You just spent four days in a VR chamber firing mock weapons at computer-generated images. You think that felt real?”

“Yeah, that felt real.” Dean raised himself up on an elbow and faced Schultz. “It was the best computer simulation I’ve ever seen.”

“Did you feel the wind on your face?”

“There was air movement in there, I felt it.”

Schultz made a face. “That was fans. Fans don’t feel like wind. Did you feel the blast when you fired the rocket?”

“I sure did feel it buck on my shoulder.”

Schultz gave his head an ursine shake. “You felt it buck. What about the blast?” Dean looked at him blankly.

“Rockets have a backblast. It’s hot and violent. If you’re in its way, it’ll kill you. Did you feel that?” Dean’s eyes went unfocused and his brow beetled. He shook his head, uncertain about what to say, other than to admit he didn’t remember that rockets had backblasts, which he wasn’t about to admit.

Schultz wasn’t a talker; he’d already said more than he usually did. He felt it was time to wrap up the conversation. “Until you fire the real weapon at a real target, you don’t really know what it’s like. No matter how good a VR is, it’s only a simulation, and there’s always a part of your mind that knows it isn’t real.” He stood, scratching himself through the underwear he’d slept in, and headed for the shower.

“Morning chow, fifteen minutes?”

“Hurry it up, Hammer,” Leach said, grinning. “I’m already hungry enough to eat a bear.” He resumed dressing.

Schultz grunted. He shed his underwear as he went into the head. A moment later they heard the sound of splashing water.

“You gonna shower and join us or are you waiting for a prince?” Leach asked Dean.

Dean’s eyes popped. He wasn’t waiting for any damn prince, he liked women too much. He stripped and hit the shower much faster than Schultz had.

Corporal Dornhofer scanned the landscape through the magnifying shield of his helmet. The surface was irregular, probably crossed by more drainage ditches like the one behind him and his men. That ditch wasn’t wide enough to hide an MBT he thought, so maybe there weren’t any larger ditches out there. He couldn’t make out anything moving in the murky vista, which was shadowed by clouds, obscured by drifting battle smoke, and tinted red by burning vehicles, buildings, and flora. He slid his infra screen into place and looked for moving hot spots. There were plenty of hot spots, but none of them were moving.

They couldn’t all be fires, and he knew at least one of them had to be a tank. Unless the tank was in defilade. If it was, they’d just have to wait until it exposed itself. He didn’t think they’d have to wait long—this was second fire team, first squad’s tenth time in the VR chamber. On the other occasions, they’d never had to wait much more than five minutes before a tank showed itself. But they’d been waiting and watching for more than ten minutes. Maybe he was missing something.