Suit boots. Damn. He released his right boot, stepped a foot sideways and reclamped it. Then the left boot. Step. Clamp.

  "Lieutenant O'Neal?" sounded a concerned Sergeant Green a few minutes later.

  "Yeah?" Mike puffed.

  "You okay, sir?"

  "Yeah," Mike grunted, fighting the physics of the situation was like carrying a boulder up a hill and the suit almost made it worse; the pseudomusculature had never been designed to side step against current. My fault again. "I'm almost to the first waypoint," he gasped. "Get the first team ready."

  "Yes, sir."

  Now he was climbing up the side of the slippery tunnel. The boots refused to slide, a tribute to the Indowy makers he decided, not the idiot designer, but getting them to clamp was noticeably harder. Finally he got a boot over the sill and with his right hand he clamped a binder onto the waypoint wall. Switching grips on the binder he rolled into the still waters of the side tunnel with a final grunt.

  "No rest for the wicked," he rasped, sucking in oxygen and pulling himself up the wall. "Michelle, increase the O2 percentage, please, before I panic."

  "Say again sir?"

  "Nothing Sergeant," Mike said, fighting a desire to tear off the armor and get a really deep breath. Of water. The increased O2 level started to help the oxygen starvation. "I'm down. Recheck those binders and I'll clamp off on this end."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Send the next suck . . . ah, volunteer for the bound down first." Mike said as he clamped the end of the line to the ceiling. He let out a few feet of slack and then clamped his line to the wall, belaying himself into the tunnel. "I definitely need to brief him. This is not as easy as I thought it would be."

  "Yes, sir," said Sergeant Green, with a chuckle. "I will tell you that you just made me fifty bucks. The betting was five to one that you wouldn't make it at all."

  "Beg pardon. I designed these systems. I, at least, had total confidence in them." In a pig's eye. "It's just the last part that's hard."

  "Ah, airborne, sir, whatever you say."

  The rest of the move out of the zone of destruction was time consuming, but not dangerous. As the move progressed the line men discovered myriad techniques to overcome the flow. Notably, stopping before the occasional turn and walking through. After three more hours they reached a pump room four kilometers beyond Qualtren in the subbasement of another megascraper.

  Ensuring that there were no Posleen in the area, Mike put the AIDs on guard and ordered the troops to get some rest. He, on the other hand, had to keep going. His problem was that although he had fifty some odd troops who, as soon as they got some rest, would be ready to murder anything with more that two legs, they were effectively weaponless. Their external weapons had been swept away in the explosion and only the few gunners with sidearms still had projectile weapons. On the other hand they each were carrying several thousand rounds of ammunition that used antimatter as a power source so there had to be something they could do. First he had to catch up on "the big picture."

  Mike felt too drained to use the voice systems so he called up a virtual desktop. His first query reported the current overall battlefield. The schematic was far worse. There was now a second green line in contact with the Posleen mass. The primary defensive line the mobile units were supposed to hold the Posleen back from for twenty-four hours had been reached at twelve.

  The mobile units, what was left of them, had been pushed to the sea and were encircled with their backs to it. Mike ran another query and watched as the perimeter withdrew, flickered and died. Eight hours. The same operational projection called for the primary defense line to break in eighteen to twenty-four.

  Next he located the remainder of the 325th in reserve of the primary defensive line. The ACS unit had been the only mobile unit able to retreat fast enough to avoid being encircled. He did not bother to determine his new chain of command, he assumed that Major Pauley was no longer in command and that would make the new commander Major Norton. That was no improvement from his point of view. It looked on the map like the American unit had been grouped with, possibly under, the German unit.

  The encircled perimeter of armor units consisted mainly of French, German and English units. The 17th Cav, farthest from the sea and with its right flank left vulnerable by the retreat of the 325th must have been rapidly eliminated. Shades of Little Bighorn. It didn't have to happen this way. The primary Posleen assault through the sector had been decisively crushed, literally, by the demolition of Qualtren and Qualtrev. With the reinforcement of the battalion, 7th Cav could have survived. If the oil had not detonated, shattering the battalion's morale and killing Colonel Youngman. It would have worked. . . . And it could work again, he thought. No weapons, but lots of explosives. We could break that encirclement. He started sketching out a battleplan.

  "Michelle, see if you can get either General Houseman or General Bridges. I think we can pull this rabbit out of the hat, yet."

  * * *

  "Sir, First Lieutenant O'Neal, from the ACS unit is on the horn. He insists on talking to you."

  Lucius Houseman was in no mood to talk to Lieutenant O'Neal at the moment. He could read maps just as well as the lieutenant and if he could not he had any number of staff officers ready to tell him what the morrow would bring. Once the mobile units trapped against the sea were finished off, the Posleen there would come after the primary defensive line in a serious way. It would be poorly defended without the support of the cavalry divisions destroyed by the retreat. He now had to agree with the lieutenant that the ACS unit had not been ready for combat, not that as a cavalryman he had ever had the liveliest faith in the damn airborne. But he also did not want to listen to O'Neal say "I told you so!" in any way shape or form.

  He also had heard some rumor that the destruction of the battalion before the combat was even fully joined was because of some cockamamie plan on the part of the "expert" he had been saddled with. He considered for a full minute whether to take the call. His thinking, after twenty hours of watching his forces being destroyed piecemeal, was getting sluggish. He took a sip of tepid water from a canteen and considered his options. I guess that is what I get for splitting my forces in the face of the enemy. We could go nuclear, he thought, it would give us a breather, push them back for a space. Finally he nodded and the aide handed him the receiver.

  "What do you want, O'Neal?" he snapped shortly.

  "I can pull this out, sir."

  "What?"

  "We can still win this one, sir. I'm behind the lines with a half company of troops. We don't have any weapons but we have antimatter out the ying-yang." O'Neal was talking fast because he knew what he was about to suggest was not the way America played the game. But he also knew that if General Houseman thought about it he would see the truth of the battleplan.

  "We can move to the area of the encirclement and drop the megascrapers right on the Posleen. All it requires is taking out about thirty critical supports and these buildings will fall. We can drop them on the Posleen and at the same time clear the way for the MLR. Probably we could cut a swath to the primary line and break the cav out, but at the least we could protect the cav units until they can be withdrawn by sea."

  "You want to blow up more of these buildings? The Darhel are already screaming about Qualtren and Qualtrev!"

  "Sir, with all due respect, two items, three really. One, the buildings are going to be lost anyway unless we go nuclear. Then it will be centuries before they can use the real estate. Two, it is not a political decision, it is an operational one. The Darhel have already agreed that we decide how to wage war. And, whereas I know that the United States Army prefers to limit collateral damage, sometimes it's time to just get down and do the dance, sir, hang the consequences. Any friendlies in there are dead anyway."

  "Give me a few minutes to consider it, Lieutenant. How long to get from your present location to there?"

  "About an hour, sir, the way I'm going to go."

  "All right. I'll be back in no more than five minutes. Would the support of the ACS units in the reserve be useful, critical, or unnecessary."

  "I need weapons more than troops, sir. If you can get me weapons and detonators, I don't need more than another fifty troops."

  General Houseman felt energy moving back into him, the crushing depression of the defeat evaporating. Whether he went with the option or not, whether they won or not, the Posleen were going to end up knowing they had been kissed, or his name wasn't Lucius Clay Houseman.

  Three minutes and forty seconds later General Houseman was back on the line.

  "I concur with your plan, Lieutenant. Your mission is to move with your unit into the area of the Dantren encirclement and to begin demolition of megascrapers in and around the encirclement with the primary purpose of reducing the pressure on the encircled units and secondary purpose of creating a window for the encircled units to withdraw to friendly lines.

  "You may use any method and any level of force up to and including the use of significant quantities of antimatter. You are specifically charged to break the encirclement at any cost. I will call for volunteers from the ACS units in the reserve and will detach thirty-six troops in nine combat shuttles to attempt to make up a forlorn hope resupply run. I cannot at this time offer more personnel or equipment support than that."

  "Thank you, sir," said O'Neal, his voice firm. "We'll move out as soon as I wake my troops up and give a frag order."

  "Good luck, son, good hunting."

  "Gary Owen, sir."

  "Why you damn wind dummy! Only cavalrymen get to say that!"

  "I can run faster than an M-1 and shoot an Apache out of the sky," said the lieutenant, quietly. "I am not infantry or cavalry, neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red meat, sir."

  "What are you then?" asked the general humorously.

  "I'm just the damn MI, sir."

  "Well then, `Footsack, you damn MI.' "

  "Yes, sir. Out here. Michelle, platoon freq. Sergeant Green, start wakin' 'em up."

  "Ah, Jesus, sir. We just stopped!" the sergeant complained.

  "Sometimes you eat the bear, Sergeant, and sometimes . . ." He squeezed gritty eyes together and sipped stale suit water. They had been up since before dawn, fought a "murthering great battle," been blown up by a catastrophic explosion, tunneled out of hell, swum the Stygian depths and now had to go on after a ten minute stop. Well, that was what technology was for. "Michelle, order all the AIDs to administer Provigil-C."

  The drug was a combination of a Terran antinarcolepsy drug and a Galactic stimulant. The Terran drug prevented sleep from forming. However it was believed that the stresses of combat were such that more than an antinarcotic was necessary.

  When the powerful and persistent Galactic stimulant started coursing through their veins, the troops started to move. Some of them popped their visors to wipe gritty eyes and sniff uncanned air, but they were mildly surprised to find that the storeroom they had occupied was black as night. The AIDs had automatically been enhancing ambient light or using the ultraviolet suit lights for so long the troops had lost all sense of light or dark outside their private environments. The few troops who had sustained noncritical injuries, including the luckless trooper with only one hand and Private Slattery, now forever immortalized in combat suit statistics, were visited by the medic, more for human reassurance than because he could do anything the suits could not do.

  Meanwhile Mike gathered the NCOs around and sketched out an initial order of movement. The engineers suddenly became critical to the success of the mission. Withal they could move nearly as fast as the infantry they supported, their armor was so bulged with storage they looked like walking grapes. Most of the storage was detonators and triggering devices. When it came down to it, there were lots of things that one could convince to explode, if one had a detonator and, although there were a number of ways to convince a detonator to explode, the best ways involved being far away at the time. So, rather than load up on explosives and light on detonators, they went the other way. They did carry twenty kilos of C-9, reduced somewhat from the tunneling, but it was a minor chunk of their storage.

  The armor was circled with storage compartments, each designed precisely for explosives storage. The store points had blow-out panels and two of them had blown out on one of the engineers during the explosion under Qualtren; it gave him a lopsided look. Now they opened the compartments and started distributing their packages of good cheer. Every troop took fifty detonators and triggering devices. The triggering devices were fairly intelligent receivers that could be set to detonate by time or on receipt of a signal. In addition, the platoon redistributed their own C-9 so that each of them had at least a half kilo; that would be enough for their purposes.

  The trickiest part was that they needed to move on the surface to the encirclement. There was not enough time to use the water mains. If they went that way the units would be dead and digested by the time they reached the area. Mike had a plan and he would have to overcome vocal and severe objections when he told them about it. His stock, however, had gone up since the first bound in the tunnels and especially when he led them to relative safety. Now they had to go back into the fire, but like troopers immemorial they faced that each as he needed to and got up and danced.

  31

  Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA Sol III

  0243 August 5th, 2002 AD

  "Sergeant," said Pappas patiently, "I have had a long goddamn day. And I am not in the best fuckin' mood to handle bullshit. I have got a platoon spread to hell and gone and I need somewhere to put them up. I need transportation and quarters. What I don't need is bullshit from you."

  He was actually glad to see that the company was maintaining a Charge of Quarters. The NCO in question was half out of uniform, had obviously been asleep when Adams found him and was being a pain in the ass, but it was still good to find. Now if he could only get the CQ to enter some vague condition of reality.

  "I'm sorry, Sergeant," said the overweight NCO, mulishly. He waved the copy of their orders that Pappas had handed him. "This is not sufficient authority for me to allow your troops into the barracks. For all I know they might be forged." He looked at the gathered squads standing in the darkness.

  The discussion was being held under the pool of radiance from a yellow bug light on the porch of a trailer, one of many in the area. Each of the trailers held a platoon. They were gathered into five trailers to a company. There were, in turn, five company areas gathered in a battalion area with a battalion headquarters at one end and trailers for senior NCOs at the other. The battalions were separated from each other by a street on one side and a parade ground on the other. The lack of lighting turned the whole mass into just another maze of buildings.

  Pappas turned purple and started to throttle the stupid jerk but stopped himself with difficulty. "You do realize, I hope," he said with a dangerously quiet voice, "that you are dealing with your new first sergeant?" The naked threat dropped to the floor like an anvil.

  "Well," said the NCO in a priggish voice, "we'll just have to see what First Sergeant Morales says about that."

  Pappas looked momentarily nonplussed. "You have another E-8 in the company?" he asked. It was not the information he had been given, but none of the conditions at Indiantown Gap matched any briefing he had received.

  "Well," said the CQ with a slightly flustered expression, "Sergeant Morales is a Sergeant First Class," he admitted. "But he is the first sergeant of this company," he ended confidently.

  Pappas simply looked at the sergeant for a moment. Then he put his hand over his eyes. What did they do, dump a loony bin in here or something? he thought. He leaned into the NCO's face then turned to the side. "I want you to look right here," he snarled, pointing at his upper arm. "I want you to count these rockers! How many do you count?"

  "Three," whispered the NCO, all confidence fled.

  "And how many does Morales have?"

  "Two."

  "Do you know what that means, you fuckin' pissant?" snarled Pappas, turning and putting his face right in that of the other NCO.

  The sergeant's mouth turned into a wide rubbery frown and his eyes started to tear up.

  Pappas' eyes widened. "Are you starting to cry?" he asked, incredulously.

  A tear started to roll down the CQ's face and he gave a sob.

  Pappas stepped back and looked heavenward. "God in heaven, why me?" he asked. "Where the fuck is the SDNCO?" he snapped.

  "I don't know what that is," said the chubby sergeant.

  "How the hell could a sergeant not know what the battalion Staff Duty NCO is?" asked Pappas. Then a thought struck him. "How long have you been a sergeant?" he asked.

  "A month." The sergeant continued to snuffle, but the tears had stopped.

  Pappas shook his head and continued the interrogation. "Is this the first unit you've been in?"

  The sergeant nodded mutely.

  "And how long have you been here?"

  "Since April."

  "April! You've been in the fuckin' Fleet six months and you made sergeant?!"

  "Special circumstances, Top," said a voice from the darkness. A tall soldier stepped into the puddle of yellow light.

  "You'd better stay out of this, Lewis," hissed the CQ. "Or you know what'll happen."

  "Shut up," said Pappas conversationally. "If I want any more shit out of you I'll squeeze your head 'til it pops." He examined the soldier in the yellow light. His gray silks were neat and trim and he had a fresh haircut. He wore the rank of a specialist, but there was clear indication that another rank, probably the chevrons of a sergeant, had been in place recently.

  "What special circumstances?" he asked. He glanced at the roly-poly NCO. "I mean . . . ?" He gestured at the example.

  "The company is a little short on NCOs right now," the specialist answered wryly. "Shit, the only thing we're not short on is trouble."

  "I've got a load of new troops for the company," said Pappas, turning his attention fully away from the useless CQ. "I need quarters."