NIGHT, deep night, but in the infrared goggles the heat still eddied in shimmering waves off the steel deck, griddle-hot from where the strike fighters had warmed up. The dark lightninged from strobes. It shuddered with the SHUMP SHUMP SHUMP of huge four-bladed rotors powering through the greasy sea air.
Sergeant Hector Ramos bent into the prop blast, clutching his Mickey Mouse ears. They were clamped tight, but the engines all around still battered at his brain. Behind him the platoon waited, down on one knee, gear-heavy, silent, focused on the black aircraft that squatted ahead, maws open. Half the Marines were human. The others were CHADs, in a new pairing-up Higher thought might be a better tactical mix.
At the far end of the flight deck, the UAVs were taking off.
Ahead, the vertical takeoff aircraft that would shuttle the Second of the Third in to hit the beach.
Behind, his men and women.
Second Battalion, Third Marines. He’d hit hostile beaches with them on Itbayat and Taiwan. But he was practically the only one left from those assaults, aside from a few lifers in the head shed. A staff sergeant now, but he never felt like he knew what he was doing. Embrace the suck, sure, but the enemy had cut down so many officers so fast the new ones had no idea what to do in combat.
Which left the Combat Action Ribbon vets. Like him.
The Corps had reorganized again, struggling to learn from the bloodbath on Taiwan. A squad still had three fire teams, but only six members were human. Each team was led by a human lance corporal or PFC, and built around a M240B machine gun, the new titanium-framed model with increased rate of fire. A Sensor and Robotics Controller had been added to each platoon. Hector’s “sark,” as everyone immediately called him, was a slim Puerto Rican named Vacante. Vacante spoke a weird Spanglish but Hector could make himself understood when they went off-line so the others wouldn’t hear.
Except for the Pigs, everyone’s weapons had suppressors now, plus a stabilized sight and a laser pulser built into their rangefinders that would dazzle an enemy at three hundred yards. Their jelly armor was tougher and when they moved it generated power for their electronics. Their helmets incorporated night vision, intrasquad radio, and BattleGlass data. The heavy face shields opaqued like a welder’s goggles when a laser hit them.
The nonhuman squad members were CHAD Ds, driven by an uprated AI that was supposed to give each robot the combat reactions of a Marine PFC.
Hector scratched at his eye. He’d had the face shield pushed up just for a second when out of nowhere some bit of grit or steel blew off the deck and into his eye. The more he dug at it, the worse it would feel. Fuck it, he thought. Let it fucking go blind if it wanted to. He snatched his hand down.
He was looking at the nearly invisible disk of the propeller.
For some reason, last-second maintenance probably, the VTOL had its engine nacelles turned partially down, nearly horizontal to the deck. The flight crew had a ladder up to the engine. The Marines were holding to see if it could be readied in time for the launch.
This time, for the plains of North Korea, east of Pyongyang.
The lieutenant said it would be like Inchon, except from the east. He said Kim was dead, the regime decapitated. It must have been a hell of a naval battle. They’d passed smoking wrecks of three ships on the way in, and the Marines had spent all night up on the flight deck, in case a torpedo found the carrier.
Hector had already decided: He didn’t plan to survive this one.
He curled his fingers around the crucifix in his pocket. Mirielle had sent it, since he’d lost the rosary on the steps of the government building in Taipei. To remember me by, she’d written.
The lieutenant down-crouched beside him in the thundering dark. Hector reoriented his brain, but it felt slow, a hard turn, like steering a truck across a potato field. He’d done that when he was ten, on Mister Savage’s farm. He’d felt so grown up that day. Until his too-short foot could not reach the accelerator, and the harvester had edged up on him, and suddenly hundreds of pounds of dirt and potatoes had cascaded in his open window, burying him where he sat.
Burying him …
“Staff Sergeant. You with us?”
“Yessir.” He tried to straighten, to look alert. But who was this? It wasn’t roly-poly little Lieutenant Ffoulk. Wasn’t angular tall Hawkshadow. So who? He couldn’t remember. Lieutenant … but his mind had gone blank. The pills deadened the rage. Stopped the blackouts. But they numbed him, too, made him more a robot than the mechanical shapes crouched behind him. “Yes, sir. Say again, sir? Those engines are so fucking—”
“I said, five-minute hold.”
“The wave, sir, or just us?”
“Five minutes on everybody, but get ready to load. Should get the word over—”
The soft-voiced AI the troops called Wet Dream said in his headphones, “Wave two, five-minute hold.” Hector tapped his headphones; the lieutenant slapped his shoulder and went to the next stick.
Hector looked back along the line of troops. A hand lifted. Patterson was a squad leader now. He’d gotten that for her at least. Karamete was a sergeant, the platoon guide.
And he, Ramos, platoon sergeant. Expected to lead. Expected to take them into the fight.
But he couldn’t. Not again.
He lifted a hand in return, muttered, “hope you make it though this, Wombat.” Then faced front again. To where, past the deck edge, a black-on-black horizon was beginning to show. Delay much longer, they’d lose the dark.
But he wouldn’t be here to worry about it.
The engine roar increased. The deck shook. The other VTOLs were warming up too. Their own still had its props lowered. Was spinning up. A whirring disk, nearly invisible, though lit, in his goggles, by the infrared plumes of the engine exhaust.
Setting his rifle aside on the deck, Hector hoisted himself to his feet. He walked forward, unbuckling his pack.
Ahead, the deadly blur of the propeller.
Behind, he supposed, his Marines were staring after him.
He started to shrug the pack off.
Then stopped. Hesitated.
The platoon was watching.
If he did this, if he abandoned them, they’d die too.
So what? They were gonna anyway. Like all the others.
He stood shaking, drenched in sudden cold sweat, two paces from the whirling propeller. The wind was sucking him toward it. A mechanic looked down, mouth open in a soundless yell. Those huge blades would end all fear. All terror. Right now. It would end.
A hand clamped his shoulder. Karamete, shouting into his ear. He couldn’t hear the words, but she was yanking on his load-bearing equipment. Pulling him back with violent jerks. He resisted, then gave way. Stepped back from the prop. She thrust his carbine into his hands. Pushed her helmet into his, so they were touching. “We need to vack you, Staff Sar’n’t,” she shouted. “You shouldn’t be on this op.”
“Fuck that. You just want my billet.”
“Yeah … yeah, I want your fucking asshole billet.” She guffawed. “The fuck you think you’re going? You got a straw? Suck it up, battle buddy. Oorah?”
“Rah. Rah. Thought that was the word to go.”
He allowed her to drag him back to the queue, but halfway there the intrasquad told them to board. He let the dread go, with the terror. Blanked his mind, and signaled the platoon to their feet.
The prop blast battered them as they lurched forward, each marine bent under a hundred and fifty pounds of assault pack, weapon, ammo, food. The flight deck crew flicked wands of invisible light, waving them to the boarding ramp. Hector had already transmitted his manifest to the loading assistant. He faced the ramp, telling each man, woman, or robot as they passed to strap in and thumbs-up. When they were all boarded, he swung himself on too.
THE flight in jolted the hell out of them. Even above the roar of the turbines Hector heard the explosions outside. The airframe jolted, tilted, shuddered. A bang outside, a rattle against the fuselage, and wind whistled through holes. Hector rode with eyes closed, fists clamped on his carbine. Thinking of absolutely nothing but the map. He’d downloaded it to his command tablet, and he could access it with the BattleGlasses. But in the mountains of Taiwan so much gear had gone diddley fuck he’d decided he needed it stored in his head too this time.
Before embarking the Marines had worked in Taipei loading the ships. No one knew how many there were total, because they came from different ports. He’d counted seventy in Taipei alone. Missiles had screamed in several times a day, forcing everyone to take cover and keep masks handy. A constant threat of air attack from across the strait. Two ships were hit going out and left behind, burning.
Operation Catapult. ROK airborne would parachute in to feint an assault farther north, but the Marines would make the main landing, with the Japanese conducting a parallel assault to the south. He’d memorized his objectives for D-day. If they could reach those, Division would echelon more forces ashore and move to the next phase: reinforcing, holding any counterattack, and transitioning to sustained combat operations. The Third would be a maneuver unit. Since this was the fighting season, with hard ground and the rice paddies drained, they’d move with the tanks, punching through and penetrating deep into the enemy’s rear.
At least that was the plan. The plan had worked on Itbayat. Sort of. Hadn’t gone very well on Taiwan, though. But this was a different enemy, not Chinese. North Korean. Maybe their regime was decapitated. But no one seemed to think they wouldn’t fight, once the Allies hit the beaches.
The beaches. The diversion to the north was on Red Beach. The Japanese were landing on Blue. The Marines, on White. The hydrography was gradual for a quarter mile behind the high-tide point. Past that was rough ground, gun emplacements, concealed pillboxes, and dug-in tanks. The air and CAS drones had worked them over but there were probably plenty left. A mile in they would hit flat land, a river delta landfill. Possibly too soft for armor; the tanks would hook to the right. The city would be to their left. Leaflets and drones had warned the inhabitants to leave, but Higher doubted the enemy would let them. Which could mean dismounted urban operations. Regardless, they’d punch ahead on the right while the Japanese struck to the left. Past the city they’d join up again for the push on the capital. Always staying alert, this time, for a Chinese incursion on their right flank, across the border.
Semper Gumby, as the old Marine saying had it. Always flexible.
“Rampart, Iron Dream. Three minutes out,” the intrasquad AI said in his earbuds.
Hector blinked. Had he been here before?
Yeah. He definitely had.
When he opened his eyes one of the CHADs was watching him, tiny head cocked, its buglike, multi-lensed oculars glittering in the gloom as if lit from within. Its identifier, stenciled on its chest, read 323. They stared at each other in silence, machine and man.
Something detonated outside, or maybe it was just flares. The airframe jolted, then rolled so far he grabbed for the seat frame. “One mike,” said Iron Dream in his earbuds. Then another voice, male. “Heliteam leader, crew chief. You’ll exit the aircraft facing south. The terminal will be to your right front. The fighter revetments, behind you. The ferry harbor will be on your left.”
“This is Rampart 1-2, roger. Thanks for the lift.”
“Give ’em hell, Rampart.”
Seconds later the airframe jolted, hard, and Dream added, “On deck.”
“This is crew chief: on deck, dropping ramp.”
Hector had popped his lap belt and hoisted to his feet. “Rampart 1-2, load and lock. Deplane, deplane,” he’d yelled.
But that was then.
This was now.
Again.
He shuddered, gripping his weapon, squeezing his eyes shut. Weren’t two-island Marines supposed to be over this … over this fear? But it got worse every time. Not better. Worse.
While you were supposed to pretend—
Someone was shaking him. Shouting in his ear.
He opened his eyes unwillingly. “On deck, Sergeant,” Karamete was yelling, bent over to screen him from the others.
Oh yeah. He was supposed to be first out. The ramp was already down. The night was flickering, so bright it blanked his NVDs. He thumbed them off, stood, yelled an “Oorah,” as loud as his lungs would yield, and forced shaky legs to totter him down the ramp.
Into a flickering, noise-crammed night. He oriented, pointing his guys out to their perimeter. A shell burst a hundred meters away. The shock wave pressed his chest. His mouth was cottony. Flashes lit the hills. Line of advance … break through, disrupt the defense … fight and lead to the objective.
The air was fogged white, making it hard to see. Dust? Mist? Smoke? It didn’t seem to be gas. Whatever it was made the beams flickering through it visible. His face shield blanked, then cleared. Tank engines growled to the north, interspersed with the deafening cracks of high-velocity guns. Drones whirred overhead, heading inland. A fine mist of particles fell from them.
The lieutenant was talking in his earphones but Hector couldn’t make out what he was saying over the noise. So he ignored it. Skirmishers? Wedge? Wedges were easier to control. He hand-signaled the platoon into a vee of squads, each squad into a wedge of fire teams, and led them forward as at close to a trot as he could manage. The ground yielded, mushy under his boots. Puddles glinted. This must be the landfill. Too fucking flat, why were they even here? Zero microterrain. No cover. Get across as fast as possible. Patterson waved at him, pointed to an area in front of her. Mine.
Oh, God no, Hector thought. Flat land, and mined? Then he realized why they were skirting the road. Looking back, he realized something else. Behind him, thickset forms with narrow heads were moving more slowly than the rest.
“Rampart, Rampart One. We got a problem.”
“Go ahead.” Hector crouched, cupping an ear to the intraplatoon.
“CHADs are falling behind. Ground won’t take their weight.”
“Fuck. Uh—they’re holding up the advance, we leave them behind.”
“Leave them—? That cuts our effectives by half.”
“They can catch up when we make contact. We got to keep moving.” His own boots were sinking deeper too, almost disappearing in the muck. Shit, he thought. If this gets much deeper, none of us are going anywhere, human or machine.
The growl of engines and crack of guns to his right intensified. Armor was fighting inland along the road. The platoon had to guard their flank.
Rockets flashed above, wove, and dove into the ground ahead. The muck quaked. Fiery pinwheels rose above the flashes, and drones flickered in and out. “Somebody’s getting their asses handed to ’em,” one of the squad leaders offered.
Hector signaled the base fire team off to the right, where it looked like it might be slightly firmer terrain. He couldn’t slide too far in that direction or he’d collide with the next platoon, but maybe they were having the same problem. He tried the radio but couldn’t raise them. An ominous crackle grew ahead, as they waded toward what looked like a paddy wall.
Geysers of wet muck blasted up, spattering his face with mud as he dived flat. A heavy MG. And they were out in the open … he rolled over, opened his tablet, and punched it in. The drones hesitated, milling around; then wheeled, merged into a swarm, and dove. The tap-tap-tap faltered, then fell silent.
Another two hundred meters. The paddy seemed endless. The platoon alternated rushing and dropping, in case somebody remanned the gun. Hector lay in the mud, yearning desperately to stay there, but forced himself to his feet. I’m up. He rushed. They see me. He dropped. I’m down. Around him the others sprinted forward in bursts, then covered the others as they in turn exposed themselves.
They reached the paddy wall, panting, mud-smeared, exhausted, but without being fired on again. The wall was like a dike, running roughly north and south, about twenty feet above the lower ground behind them and ten feet above the ground ahead. Bodies in green uniforms were sprawled around their weapons. Some were still trying to crawl. The Marines kicked their rifles away, or shot them if they wouldn’t give them up. Beyond the dike to the west flat ground stretched away, stitched with small sheds and, between them, what looked like vegetable fields with stakes and nets. To protect the crops from birds, Hector figured. He’d seen nets like that growing up. In the far distance more brown mountains rose.
Karamete pulled the block out of the enemy MG and whipped it sidehanded out into the paddy. Hector fired several rounds into an antitank launcher with bodies sprawled around it, then looked again at the flat land ahead and wished he hadn’t. They might need a weapon like that if the enemy counterattacked with tanks.
Well, fuck, too late now … should think before he acted … He checked his tablet. The flanking platoons had reached their objective line too. He didn’t understand, it looked like they were parked out here practically in the open, but those were the orders.
“Rampart, consolidate in place,” came down from Company. He pointed his guys out into a hasty 180 and started improving his position, basing it on the dugout they’d just captured. The tablet recommended his geometry of fire and it looked okay, so he got his guns digging in right and left along the paddy wall and threw OPs out. As Vacante, the sark, deployed ground sensors a kilometer to their front, Hector got on the tactical for ACE reports.
A rank of slowly marching machines caught his eye. The robots, just now catching up. They dragged mud-caked extremities through the soft soil as if they were wading. He put the word out to send one back from each squad to bring up more ammunition, and to reintegrate the rest into the fire teams as they arrived.
The drones were still buzzing above them, orbiting, dipping in, optical turrets flicking from one face to the next. Hector waved at them. It was futile, they wouldn’t respond, but he was worried that with the mud covering his guys and the mist over the battlefield the things might not be able to read the uniforms. He was still waving when Karamete bent and picked up a Korean rifle out of the mud.
“Don’t—!” Vacante shouted.
“No,” Hector yelled, taking a step toward her.
The drone had been headed away, toward the front, but suddenly it banked. It rotated in midair and banked again, back toward her. The platoon guide froze, staring upward at it as Hector jerked forward, stumbling as the soft earth gave way, grabbing for the enemy rifle.
A jet of fire lanced down from the drone and drilled into Karamete’s chest. She went down without a scream, without a sound. Or maybe it was just covered by the whirring as the other disks wheeled back, like a swarm of aroused hornets, and began buzzing to and fro over them, optics glinting this way and that.
The whole squad had rifles up, aiming at the drone that had fired, which was still hovering threateningly. “Cease fire,” Vacante shouted. Hector repeated it, waving his open palm in front of his face in the cut signal. For a heart-stopping moment the humans and robots below and the hovering disks above froze, weapons trained on each other. Then, apparently, the disks decided they were friendly. They canted away and buzzed off, zigzagging in erratic but probably closely coordinated patterns to reconnoiter the fields,
Karamete lay still conscious, blinking up. One of the squaddies pulled her jelly armor away. It revealed a charred hole in her chest. There wasn’t any blood. Just black char. Hector took a knee. They looked at each other. “Gloria,” he said.
Her lips twitched, but she didn’t say anything. She looked away from him, up at the sky. Then closed her eyes.
Hector whirled away and fired out his magazine toward the fields. Then the others’ hands were on him. Removing the carbine. Patting his back. The world turning white, like a jet of fire. Then red. Then black.
HE woke on his back, staring up at the same white sky. Like Karamete. His brain was dead as the sky.
Patterson was crouched over him. “Hey,” she said. “Hey. Staff Sar’n’t. You there?”
“Here,” he grunted, and tried to sit up.
She pressed him back down with firm hands. “The old man’s online again,” she yelled to someone. Then, to him, “Lieutenant says, stand to. Counterattack’s forming up, in those hills.”
He cradled his head. Then groped in the mud. “My rifle. Where’s—”
“Sark’s got it. Sure you ready for it?”
He held out a hand. She handed it over reluctantly.
“Take cover,” Wet Dream said in his earbuds. “Take cover. Gas attack. Gas attack. Set MOPP level four. Active agent, presumed VX. Set MOPP level four. Active agent, presumed VX.”
With a distant rumble fiery trails leapt up far ahead. One after the other, so fast it had to be a rocket battery. The comets arched upward, bent, then plunged. Hector tensed, then sucked a relieved breath; they were aiming over them, past them. Lasers burned the air behind the Marines, searching out the plunging projectiles. Some detonated. But there were too many to stop.
The explosions started. Behind them, back in the paddies, hollow cones of smoke, but mingled with each a silvery mist. The detonations walked forward as the rockets kept falling. Around him Marines were struggling with packs, pulling out masks and suits, ripping plastic, throwing away wrappings, stuffing legs and arms into the protective suits in an ecstasy of fumbling.
Hector tore his mask carrier open, oriented the rubber spider, and snapped it onto his face. As he kicked off his boots he tore wrappings from the one-use plastic suit that had replaced the old charcoal-lined overgarments, thrust his legs into it, his arms, and sealed the seam. The others panted and cursed, fighting their way into the suits as the barrage rolled over them. Hector sealed the hood around the mask, pushed his feet back into his boots, rolled into the bottom of the hole, and pulled Karamete’s body over him as the ground quaked and the air filled with hissing steel.
Been here before. Been here before, he told his terrified mind. In the hills. Taiwan. Heavier shelling than this. You can stand this.
But it hadn’t been gas then.
A marine fell screaming into the hole, thrashing and writhing. Hector grabbed him, shook him. He couldn’t tell who it was through the mask. Jagged rips in the suit showed where fragments had torn the plastic.
Hector groped for an autoinjector, hesitated—he might need it himself in a few seconds—then thought fuck it and banged it into the guy’s thigh. The other marine was doubled over, vomiting into the mask, struggling to pull it off. Hector knocked his hands away and banged him with another autopen. The guy relaxed, maybe passed out, but not fighting him anymore. Hector dragged him down into the hole as another salvo, heavy explosive this time, shook dirt down over them.
Alternating gas, fragments, HE. He had to admire the tactic even as he cowered at the bottom of a hole, clawing more dirt over them. Maybe it would absorb some of the agent. Even a pin speck would kill you, they said. He could see the shit seething in the air, a deadly mist settling on everything: weapons, bodies, live Marines, CHADs with their oculars and the air intakes for their fuel cells sealed.
“Rampart, Foolhardy, Mountain Goat, ACE reports,” the AI said. Hector ignored it, trying to fucking breathe in the mask. Dizzy. Coughing. Thickness in his throat. His chest, hard to breathe. He wanted to tear it off too, but kept his hands down, fists clenched. Only now realizing he’d lost contact with his weapon in the struggle with the suit. Fuck. Fuck. Any minute now—
“Rampart, Foolhardy, Mountain Goat, stand by for enemy counterattack to your front,” the AI intoned, barely audible over the whine and buzz of jamming.
Explosions were still quaking the ground. But he had to force himself to shove the body off him, scoop the dirt away. Get out of the hole. VX heavier than air. The guy he’d atropined lay motionless, arms flung out. Now Hector saw the torn-away foot, dangling by a ligament. He’d been bleeding out even as Hector injected him. He looted the corpse’s pack for the decon kit and injectors and jammed one into his own thigh. Didn’t feel the puncture, and had to look down and see a spot of blood to confirm the pen worked.
He crawled over bodies, stuck his head out of the hole, and scanned the line through the fogged-up eyepieces. Only a few forms still moved. Fewer carried weapons. Eyes front … a wall of even thicker white was rolling toward them. Antitargeting smoke. The enemy would come out of that to hit them. He looked around again, spotted one of the Pigs. Unmanned. Bodies lay around it. He low-crawled toward it. Silvery condensation sparkled on the cover assembly.
“Safety on ‘F.’ Bolt to the rear,” he muttered. He slotted the charging handle and flipped up the cover. Stuck a plastic-covered finger in to check that the feed tray and chamber were clear.
While maintaining rearward pressure, pull the trigger and ease the bolt assembly forward.
“Double link at the open end,” the voice of a man long dead yelled in his ear. “Free of dirt and corrosion.”
He snapped the first round of the belt into the feed groove, double link leading, open side of the links facing down.
Hold the belt six rounds from the loading end. Ensure that the round remains in the feed tray groove, and close the cover assembly.
The pale shining smoke walked closer, blown on the wind. Shadowy objects moved within it, then were obscured again.
“Gun one up,” Hector yelled, swinging the barrel to make sure he had traverse and elevation. Two boxes. Four hundred rounds. Spare barrel. Tool kit. Beside him one of the masked forms stirred. Built to hands and knees, and swayed into position to help feed the belt.
Hector glanced around for gloves. If he tore the thin plastic of his suit on a link, if a hot case melted through, the agent would penetrate and he’d die. He found one, pulled it on, and snuggled into the butt. Set his face to the sights.
A hot day in California. The mad-sounding old gunny with his Iraqi accent pacing along the top of the berm. Fucking optics gonna go south on you. The internal components shift and you’ll lose the zero. Grease-smear, blood on the lens, you’re fucking toast. Learn the fucking irons too.
“Fuck the queen,” Hector muttered. “You the king.”
He was about to press the trigger when the plain ahead of him erupted in smoke and flame. He crouched, hugging the mud as something roared overhead, shrieking and whining.
The earth tore apart two hundred meters ahead. Flashes flickered just above the ground, succeeded instantly by black bursts of smoke. They sounded like 155s going over, but they didn’t burst like any 155s he’d ever heard.
A tank silhouetted itself through the smoke, infantry trotting behind. They looked tiny and ineffectual behind the hulking machine. Hector swung and started work. The gun battered his shoulder and the bipod feet knocked dirt free. He reset them, aimed again, and fired another burst. Can’t see. Mask fogging. Can’t breathe. Red things swayed at the edges of his vision, like closing scarlet curtains on a stage.
But got to keep firing.
Something burst directly over the tank. A bluish flash, a dazzle of light, and the huge metal beast faltered. “What the fuck,” Hector muttered into the mask. The barrel rose into the air. It halted. It wasn’t smoking or on fire. Didn’t look damaged. Yet somehow that blue dazzle had just … stopped it dead.
When he looked back at the enemy infantry, they were all down. He sent a burst their way, but then let up off the trigger, scowling. Puzzled.
“What the fuck,” the guy beside him muttered through the mask diaphragm. At least, that’s what Hector thought he said. Past him he spotted the upper shell of a half-buried CHAD. Its “head” was bent back at a strange angle, and a good half of the wedge-like “face” was cleaved away. Maybe nerve gas didn’t bother them, but they didn’t seem as adept at digging in as the meat Marines.
When he looked front again more tanks were looming, more troops trotting toward him. He resumed firing. The barrage resumed, built, climaxing to a terrifying roar as hundreds of tiny bomblets tumbled from the sky. They hit the ground, kangarooed up, and exploded. The closest sent fragments whacking overhead, and he pulled his loader back into the fighting hole, pushing his helmet down into the mud. Until they could decontaminate, a slice from a Blue frag would kill just as fast as one from the enemy. Shells rumbled in over them like a steady stream of tractor trailers on a six-laner.
He suddenly realized what was going on.
The Second of the Third was bait.
Nothing but chum for these fuckers, to lure them into the kill zone.
Pushed out to this dike on the edge of the plain so the NK would have to come across it to attack them.
Exposing them to the full weight of Allied air, and drones, and missiles and shelling from the sea.
But he still didn’t get what the blue flashes were. So bright it hurt to look at them, even through the laser shields. They were stopping the tanks. Mowing down the infantry. But he didn’t see how.
All he could think to do was keep as much dirt as he could between him and the killing going on to their front.
He lay there for what seemed like hours. The sky dimmed, whether from smoke or dusk he couldn’t tell. Occasionally the AI would transmit an update, or Company would call for reports. Hector texted short answers on his command tablet. Dimly, through the din, he marveled that this time, comms were holding up. He could even make out, dimly, through the glimpses the sensors sent back, what was happening in the four-mile swathe of flat land between him and the mountains.
It was a zone of annihilation. Whole mechanized divisions rumbled down the road, formed up in battle order, and advanced. The steady thunder never let up. It waned from time to time, but always built again. Missiles flashed over. Now and then he could make out a darker speck: a plane or attack helo, higher up. A conveyor belt of destruction, moving ordnance to the front, chewing up steel and human flesh, then returning to rearm.
But the attacks didn’t stop. They kept coming. A river, unrelenting.
He lay prone, firing only occasionally now, to conserve ammo, when he was sure of his targets. But his fear did not abate. Sooner or later, the planes and ships would run out of ordnance too. If even a platoon made it to the dike, they’d roll over the few Marines left. Another salvo of gas, a few more air bursts, and the thin green line would thin, crumple, evaporate.
The enemy would punch through.
But then … he’d be bogged down in the paddies behind them. A mile or more of wet, soft ground, no microterrain, not even any way, in such soft muck, to dig in. Even if the enemy broke through, he’d still be wide open from the air, from the guided munitions coming in from seaward.
But the platoon, his guys … they were the sacrificial lambs.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world …
He touched the crucifix, beseeching God to help his Marines.
MUCH later, the rumble lessened. The captain transmitted, “Rampart, Foolhardy, Mountain Goat, stand to.”
Hector and his hole mate pushed themselves up and scanned their fields of fire. Smoke rose slowly from all around. In the gloaming he could make out piles of dead, canted, broken silhouettes of armor. A single figure staggered to and fro out there. He charged the 240, then realized it wasn’t advancing on him, just staggering about. Even as he watched, it crumpled, and lay still.
Something exploded in the distance, sending popping tracers of fireworks into the air. It chattered on for some seconds, then slowly died away.
Hector pushed himself out of the hole. His arms and legs shook uncontrollably. Something soft squished in his trou. He fumbled the decon kit open and wiped the gun down. Checked his ammo. He tapped his loader’s shoulder, pointed to the Pig, and staggered away. Check the line. Report. Ammo. Casualties. Report.
Most of the platoon were dead. They lay with masks on or off. Those who’d torn them off sprawled blue-faced, foam drying at nose and mouth and eyes. Those with masks on lay smeared with blood where they’d clumsily, futilely tried to patch torn suits before they died. Only a few blinked blankly up at him through the masks, or lifted shaking fists in token they still lived.
A hundred meters to the north one of the tanks had run up onto the dike before being stopped. A T-72, with bricks of reactive armor glued all over the turret. Marines lay curled around it like dead insects.
He climbed up onto its rear deck, faced into the breeze, and lifted his mask, just for a second. The air stank of bitter powder and shit and death, underlaid by a strong kerosene-y smell he figured was the sarin. Bodies and wreckage as far as he could see. The paddies behind them were cratered with shell holes.
His heart began thundering in his ears. A fine sweat broke on his back and prickled along his arms.
He fitted his mask back on and banged another injector into the meat of his thigh. His mouth was dry as the tomb. The sky seemed darker than it should be this early. He staggered as if heatstroked, wincing at a splitting headache.
Orders came down to stand by for another attack. Drones buzzed in from beachward. They landed on the dike and released their cargo: ammo, water with electrolyte replenisher, more injectors, mask filters, replacement suits. Hector set up his remaining MGs and reallocated fields of fire. He got the men digging out the CHADs, pissing the mud off their oculars, finding operable weapons for them, and placing them back on line. Both his 0352 Javelin missilemen were out of action, one gassed, the other missing, but the launcher seemed operable. He assigned two PFCs to see if they could spin it up. “They gonna reinforce us, Staff Sergeant?” one wanted to know.
Hector just shrugged.
THEY repelled another attack that night, around 0200, but it was weaker than the afternoon’s. This time the tanks advanced warily, only five or six, and they pulled back as soon as a shell burst near them. The PFCs got a Javelin off but they must not have hit the right buttons because it vanished to the west, still going strong.
Higher said the enemy was losing confidence. Or maybe just running out of men and tanks. Still, the platoon stood to all night long. Hector snatched half hours of sleep in his mask between standing at the Javelin’s thermal sight unit, which gave him a better view than his own NVGs. Each time he fell asleep, though, he woke gasping, his heart hammering, feeling suffocated.
THE next day dawned to an ominous quiet. Hector kept expecting orders to move out, take the hills ahead. But they stayed put. Around noon word came down that the commanding general had broadcast an invitation to the commander opposite to meet. He was suggesting a cease-fire while the higher-ups talked.
After another long tense wait the captain passed the word to stand easy. “We’re in a cease-fire status,” he said over the net. “Nobody knows for how long, or what, but we’re to halt in place for now.”
Hector walked the line again, noting once more how many fighting holes were empty. How few of the platoon was left. None of the old dogs but him. Patterson was dead. Karamete, a blue-on-blue casualty. Vacante, the sark, had been laser-blinded and evacuated. Hector fleeted up PFCs to squad leaders, and radioed back that they’d need reinforcements if they had to keep holding here. Drones humming along ten feet above the line, spraying a chemical that smelled like limes and was supposed to neutralize the sarin.
As dusk neared again the captain showed up in person. He walked the line with Hector but said little beyond that some refurbished CHADs were on the way up.
As they got to where Patterson had died two marines in masks and gloves were working her stiffened limbs into a plastic body bag. “Hey,” one said. “Can you guys help out here?”
“What you need?” the captain said, voice muffled in his mask.
“Just hold it up. Need to get a shot. This one’s in pretty good shape.”
The other guy was going through her pockets, stuffing whatever he found into a Ziplock. Hector knelt and got his arms under her. When he hoisted her up the mortuary guy felt down around the body. He held up her dog tag beside her face and snapped a photo with his tablet. Then inverted the tablet and held it to her neck, scanning her chip. He stood, and took another photo. “That’s good, thanks,” he said. “You can let it down now.”
Hector squatted beside her as they zipped it up. Her face was the last to vanish. Somebody had wiped the mud off but she still didn’t look good. He rubbed his cheeks, making sure to keep his hands clear of his eyes. He didn’t feel anything, though.
He could see her again, standing at the top of a building, smiling at him as he raised a flag. Broken-field sprinting along the line, ammo boxes tucked under her arms. Squatting with him as they shared a vape.
But he didn’t feel a fucking thing.
Karamete. Patterson. Vacante. And six more, out of twenty humans left in the platoon.
He could remember all their names. Funny. Because as the captain stood above him, Hector couldn’t recall who he was. Something Italian? Fuck, he couldn’t remember his own fucking name. Had to take out his Geneva ID to remind himself.
But he could see every guy and girl who’d died beside him. Remember what they looked like. What they’d said.
Weird. He couldn’t remember the names of the living.
Only those of the dead.
Hector pushed to his feet, not looking back, and he and the captain moved on. Stepping over the torn-up ground, skirting the body bags, each neatly laid out by the graves registration team.
“You did well, Staff Sergeant,” the captain said. “They threw everything they had at us. Three full mech divisions. But the Second held. You did okay.” He glanced sideways. “How you holding up?”
“I would like to apply for a transfer,” Hector said, rubbing his throat. Astonished, once the words were out of his mouth.
The officer frowned. “This campaign’s over, Staff Sar’n’t. Seoul’s in uprising. Kim’s dead. We broke the army’s back. But we’ll have to occupy. Pacify. We need you here.”
“I want to put in for a transfer, sir.”
The captain examined Hector’s face. His expression changed. Became less surprised. Almost understanding. “Where would you want to go, Staff Sergeant? Training? Or do we need to evac you for CSC? I can’t see inside your head, Marine. You tell me.”
Hector bent over, breathing hard. Something immovable and solid and very hard seemed to be choking off his breathing. He pulled out another autoinjector, and hit his thigh with 2-PAM chloride. The spring triggered but he didn’t feel any pain. He didn’t feel anything. Except the weight in his chest, the inability to swallow anymore, which no antidote seemed to help.
“Well?” the captain said.
Hector said, forcing the words out past the thing crouched in his throat, “Sir. To anywhere I don’t have to send my people out to die.”