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  “Gentlemen, I’m now going to turn you over to the good auspices of Commander Campinisi, who will give you some details of what we are about to do.” The staff and subordinate commanders sprang to attention as Sturgeon stepped off the stage and marched out of the briefing room.

  Once he was out of sight, Commander Campinisi, the FIST operations officer, began his briefing.

  “This is Marston St. Cyr. He’s the vice president for Marketing and Research of Tubalcain Enterprises—or at least he was until he appointed himself a major general in something called the Diamundean Armed Forces and came up with enough main battle tanks to form several armored divisions...”

  “You heard me,” Commander Van Winkle snarled. “Main battle tanks.” Thirty-fourth FIST’s infantry battalion commander wanted to glare at his assembled staff officers and company commanders, but was too shocked at the news himself to pull it off. “Right now the only weapons organic to the FIST that can kill an MBT are the squadron’s Raptors and the guns of our artillery battery. This battalion certainly doesn’t have anything else that can do more than annoy one of those monsters—unless one sits around long enough for our massed plasma weapons to burn through it. And I can’t imagine anyone, even a tanker, dumb enough to do that. When we reach Diamunde, we will be reinforced by additional Marine artillery. Each of the six FISTs in the operation—yes, I said six FISTs—will be supported by a general support battalion of 175mm and 200mm towed howitzers. Unfortunately, we aren’t going to be able to do any training with them before the assault.” Protestations interrupted him, but Van Winkle held up his hand. “We’ll still be able to train with the FIST air and artillery. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I want you to be doing between now and the time our antiarmor weapons arrive.”

  He held up his hand again to stop the questions that were coming at him. “No, I don’t know when the antiarmor weapons will arrive. All I know is they’re in transit and they have experts with them to teach us how to use the weapons.

  “Here are your assignments. Company commanders, effective as soon as you return to your barracks, begin training your men in calling in air and artillery. We won’t be able to kill every tank we see, but I don’t want even one to survive because somebody didn’t know how to call in air or artillery to kill it.

  “One,” Van Winkle said, referring to the battalion’s S-1, or personnel officer, “fine-comb your records. I want every man in this battalion to have the rank he’s supposed to have and all the decorations and commendations he rates before we mount out. Two”—the S-2, intelligence officer—“dig up everything you can find on armor and antiarmor tactics for dissemination. You can get specifics on the Diamunde armor from the F-2,” the FIST intelligence officer. “Three”—the operations officer—“coordinate with the squadron and the battery for field training. We’ll begin in the classroom, then head into the field. I want every man in the battalion to have both theory and hands-on for calling in air and artillery. Four,” logistics, “not much for you to do until our tank killers arrive. Make sure everything is packed or ready to pack for our mount out.”

  Van Winkle paused to look at his officers. They all looked serious. That was good. They also all looked like they were ready to begin, which was even better. “Let’s do these things.” He abruptly stepped out and left the briefing room by the side door that led directly to his office. He heard his company commanders and staff scrambling to do their jobs before his office door was completely closed behind him.

  “So what if they’ve got armor?” PFC Clarke objected. An assistant gunner in Company L’s third platoon, Clarke thought he understood his weapon’s capabilities. “If our guns can slag rock, they can melt armor.”

  As the more than ninety enlisted men of the company moved about, chairs rattled, conversations buzzed, and the noise level in the company classroom overpowered what Clarke’s gun team leader, Corporal Lonsdorf, had replied, so Lonsdorf reached out and smacked the back of Clarke’s head.

  “I said, clean the wax out of your ears,” Lonsdorf snarled.

  Clarke flinched, then glared at Lonsdorf while rubbing the sting from the back of his head.

  “I said,” Lonsdorf repeated, leaning closer so Clarke could hear him without him having to shout, “rocks stand still and let us slag them. Armor moves. We can’t concentrate enough fire on a moving target to melt armor.” He looked to the front of the classroom, where Gunny Thatcher, the company gunnery sergeant, had just arrived with three other Marines, two NCOs, and a warrant officer whom he didn’t recognize. “Dumb guy,” he muttered at Clarke.

  The two NCOs, a sergeant and a corporal, looked almost like recruiting posters in their garrison utility uniforms. The warrant officer wasn’t wearing spectacles, but his somewhat bewildered expression made him look like he should be. Otherwise, he looked uncomfortable, like someone had dressed him up for a costume party.

  Claypoole and Dean glanced at each other. “Spears,” Dean mouthed. Claypoole nodded. The warrant officer did indeed resemble the Confederation ambassador to Wanderjahr, whom they’d met during their last deployment.

  Gunnery Sergeant Thatcher looked over the assembled Marines for a moment before glancing toward the back of the room where Captain Conorado, the company commander, stood with the company’s other officers and first sergeant in the passageway just outside. At a nod from Conorado, Thatcher called out, “Attention on deck!” and everybody immediately stood at attention.

  “At ease,” Conorado said as he strode briskly from the back to the front of the classroom. The first sergeant, Top Myer, followed closely on his heels, glowering to the sides. Myer’s glowers didn’t mean anything in particular; it was his normal expression. The other officers arrayed themselves at the rear of the room, near where the platoon sergeants had already stationed themselves.

  Captain Conorado didn’t glower when he reached the front of the classroom and turned to face his men, but there was instant stillness when the Marines saw his expression. The company commander looked more serious than he usually did when he briefed his men on a mount out.

  “I know the scuttlebutt’s gotten around,” Conorado started. “You know we’re going up against main battle tanks. Right now the biggest problem we have is that none of you understands what a main battle tank is, what it can do, or how to kill one. Sure, you’ve all seen MBTs on historical vids—and I’ll bet none of you believe what you’ve seen in those vids. You’re right in not believing a lot of what you’ve seen; there’s a lot of exaggeration in vids. But there are things about MBTs that those vids just don’t tell you. That’s what you’re going to begin to learn today. Behind me, with Gunny Thatcher, are three Marines who will spend the next two weeks teaching you everything they can about what MBTs can do, what they can’t do, and how to kill them. You had best pay attention to them when they tell you something. If you don’t, you’re going to get yourself killed. And you’ll probably kill a lot of good Marines at the same time.”

  Conorado turned to look at Thatcher. “Gunny, take over.”

  Thatcher snapped to attention. “Aye aye, sir.” He waited until Conorado turned back toward the men, then bellowed, “Attention on deck!” He remained at attention until Conorado left the classroom. The first sergeant left with the company commander. The other officers stayed behind; they had things to learn as well.

  “As you were,” Gunny Thatcher said as soon as the captain and first sergeant were gone. He gave the Marines a moment to resume their seats before continuing. “We’ve got a lot to learn and a short time to learn it in. Sergeant Bojanowski”—he indicated one of the three Marines standing with him—“is a forward air observer from the composite squadron. He’s going to teach us how to call in air support. Corporal Henry”—he identified another of the strangers—“is a spotter from the artillery battery. He’s going to teach us how to call in the big guns. Some of you already know how to call in air or artillery, but nobody in this company has called in either in quite a while—calls for hopper me
devac or guiding hoppers in to drop off supplies don’t count. So even if you already know how, think of this as a refresher course—or use your knowledge to help train the Marines who don’t know how to do it.

  “We’ll start with artillery. Corporal Henry, the floor is yours.” Thatcher and the other two Marines stepped aside and took seats in the front row. Everybody noticed that Thatcher hadn’t introduced the warrant officer, and nearly all of them wondered why not.

  “This,” Corporal Henry began, flicking on the trid he stood next to, “is the mainstay of Marine artillery, the towed 175mm M-147 howitzer.” In the trid’s field, an artillery piece rotated. A Marine stood next to the big gun for scale. Its main wheels came up to his shoulders. The muzzle of the gun, elevated about fifteen degrees, was nearly twice his height above the ground. Other than its size, it would have been immediately recognizable as an artillery piece to a late sixteenth century French cannoneer. “The M-147 is called a ‘direct support’ weapon, but that’s because it directly supports one unit, not because it fires directly at its target. It has a range of fifty kilometers with a target-error radius at maximum range of fifteen meters. The primary ammunition used by the M-147 is explosive projectiles.” He paused for a moment while a gun crew appeared in the trid. It took the crew twenty seconds to load, aim, and fire the big gun. The image shifted to a masonry house, which erupted when the artillery round hit it. “The M-147 can be reconfigured for short-range, direct plasma fire by the simple expedient of replacing the breech and relining the bore.” The howitzer was again visible in the trid. A two-armed rigger approached it. One arm removed the bulky back end of the piece, then the other installed something that, except for its size, resembled the breech of a blaster. Another rigger approached the muzzle and slid a tube into the barrel. The change took two and a half minutes. The crew came back to the gun, lowered its elevation to horizontal, manhandled a man-size power pack into the breech, and fired at a patch of forest two kilometers away. The Marines in the classroom imagined they could hear a whoosh as the one-hundred-meter-wide swath of woods went up, though the trid didn’t have sound.

  “That’s what an M-147 looks like and a couple basics of what it can do. Now that you’re impressed, I’ll tell you how it’s used.” Corporal Henry spent the next two hours reciting more details about artillery uses and procedures for the Marines of Company L than most of them wanted to know.

  “Be back here in ten minutes,” Gunny Thatcher said when the corporal finished his introduction to artillery. The classroom emptied faster than a gun crew could load, aim, and fire a projectile round.

  Ten minutes later the gunny was standing front and center, looking at his watch. On the dot of ten minutes he looked up and saw the last man scrambling back into his seat. “I said ten minutes, MacIlargie,” he snarled, “not ten minutes and two seconds.”

  Third platoon’s PFC MacIlargie gave the gunny his best “Who, me?” look. Thatcher returned the favor with a “You’re on my list” look. MacIlargie wished he was in his chameleons so the company gunny couldn’t see him.

  “Now,” Thatcher addressed the company, secretly pleased that everybody was back so promptly, “Sergeant Bojanowski is going to introduce you to Marine Air.”

  “Most of you have seen Marine Raptors in action,” Bojanowski began as he flicked on the trid. He wondered why so many of them flinched at that. He didn’t know that most of third platoon had been on the wrong end of a two-Raptor strafing run a year earlier during a peacekeeping mission on Elneal. The trid projection showed a flight of two Raptors flying arabesques around each other far above ground.

  “The A-8E Raptor is the Marine Corps’ vertical/short takeoff/landing aircraft,” Bojanowski continued. “It has an effective combat radius of one thousand kilometers. That means it can fly a thousand kilometers, deliver support to the Marines on the ground, fight off an enemy air attack, and have enough power left to fly a thousand kilometers back to base. The Raptor’s top speed is classified, but it’s well in excess of Mach. Its armament consists of four plasma guns similar to those in the gun squad of an infantry platoon.”

  In the trid projection, the two Raptors sailed low over the ground with their guns flaming a company-size formation of man-size targets. When the aircraft completed the strafing run along the long axis of the formation, hardly any of the targets were left uncharred.

  “The Raptor also has plasma cannons.” This time the Raptors flew almost straight down from a great height. At two thousand meters they sprayed bursts from their cannons. The aircraft shuddered visibly as vernier jets cut in and bounced them back heavenward.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Bojanowski said dryly, “the Raptors are subject to fifteen g’s in that maneuver. The pilots wear special flight suits and are hooked into life-support systems that keep them from being injured or blacking out.” The plasma bolts from the cannons looked huge, and the men compared them to the bolts fired by the blasters they used. When the bolts hit the ground, they burst into fireballs more than twenty meters wide. When the fireballs dissipated, ten-meter craters could be seen in rocky ground. A wooden structure that had been struck by two bolts was turned to ash before it could burst into visible flame.

  “I only wish we had a tank on hand to show you what one of those babies can do to armor,” Bojanowski said. “Now, all the attack aircraft in the world won’t do the infantryman a damn bit of good unless he can tell the pilots where he is and what he wants killed. I’m going to begin to teach you how to do that now...”

  Sergeant Bojanowski talked for two hours, complete with trid demonstrations. In the back of the classroom, Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass, third platoon’s sergeant, nodded to himself. He’d wondered why Gunny Thatcher had the artillery corporal talk first, and now he understood. The trid projections of the Raptors in action were more exciting to watch than the artillery presentation. It kept the men’s attention better when they were beginning to tire.

  When the initial air lecture was over, Gunny Thatcher took the floor again. “It’s seventeen hours,” he announced. “Time for mess call. Be back here at eighteen hours.” He gave the men a few seconds to express surprise and disappointment, then told them, “If any of you were expecting liberty call, you’re badly mistaken. We’ve got six months worth of schooling to cram into two weeks, first here in the classroom, then in the field. You’re going to be working, studying, and learning around the clock for the duration. You’ll think you’re fortunate when you manage more than four hours sleep in twenty-four. Dismissed for chow. See you back here in one hour. MacIlargie, that doesn’t mean one hour and two seconds.”

  One hour later Sergeant Bojanowski flicked the trid back on and said, “Here’s what armed hoppers can do...”

  Chapter 6

  Joe Dean looked aghast at the landscape. “I thought there was too much snow in New Oslo,” he moaned. He shivered in his mottled-white winter gear. Even growing up in New Rochester on Old Earth with its severe winters, and visiting nearby Buffalo and Watertown, he’d never seen so much snow so early in the season.

  Hammer Schultz hawked into a snowdrift twice his height. “Ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said. “Wait’ll full winter gets here.”

  Dean turned to Schultz, a horrified expression on his face. Two meters of snow was understandable in the dead of winter, but so early? The wind swept the snow cover smooth and melted its surface into such a brittle crust a man could walk on it, but if he stepped too hard on a thin spot of crust, he’d sink into soft snow to his chest or deeper.

  “Hammer’s right,” Corporal Leach said. “Last winter we had to save four men from the platoon from drowning in the deep snow. One man from second squad, he rotated out before you got here, had a leg, an arm, and several ribs broken when a snowslide from the barracks roof hit him.”

  “No.” Dean gave his fire team leader a terrified look.

  Schultz hawked again. “Yep,” he said. “Wasn’t even a bad winter.”

  Leach nodded. “Only one seriou
s casualty and four near drownings. Not bad at all; didn’t have to bury anybody.”

  “Don’t let them spook you, Dean,” Sergeant Hyakowa said as he walked up. “We hardly ever have broken bones from falling snow, and the biggest danger of dying is from exposure.” He eyed Dean’s cold weather gear to make sure it was sealed properly. “You do have to be careful about falling in over your head, though. Smothering is a real possibility.” He dropped the infra screen on his helmet and slowly pivoted to see where the rest of the squad was. They weren’t wearing chameleons, but to the naked eye the mottled white of their winter gear had the same effect. Because the winter field uniform kept body heat in, heat signatures were lessened as well. But everybody was standing in the open, and he spotted his squad members easily enough.

  “First squad, on me,” he called out.

  In a moment the ten men of first squad, third platoon, Company L, 34th FIST, were gathered together in a tight clump, symbolically if not actually sharing body warmth. Even though none of them faced outward, all of the more experienced members of the squad spent more time looking past whoever they faced than they did looking at each other. Constant awareness of one’s surroundings is a vital skill for an infantryman, so the experienced men watched for any sign of enemy, even though the only enemy they faced on Thorsfinni’s World was the weather—and some defenseless targets set up for the artillery spotting practice they were about to conduct.

  “Cheer up, Deano,” Leach said, poking his junior man on the shoulder. “We might be in snow as deep as we are tall, but at least we’re out of the damn classroom, right?”

  Dean smiled weakly. “Yeah. No more trying to look awake when we’re asleep.” He began to brighten. They would begin practicing the things Corporal Henry had been lecturing about.