“To retake the Gap, they need nukes. Guess who has the only nukes within five hundred miles?”
Reeves raised his hand. “Major, even if there weren’t Posleen in the way…”
“There are an estimated one point two million…”
The normally taciturn driver gulped and nodded his head. “Yes, sir, but even if there weren’t we couldn’t drive that far in, what?”
“We have to be to Franklin in…” He glanced at his watch. “Six and a half hours.”
“Im-possible,” Pruitt snapped. “It took us… what… ? Nearly a day to get from Franklin to here.” After a moment he appended: “Sir.”
“Nonetheless…” Mitchell gave a thin smile to the group in the command center. “Has anyone ever heard the traditional punishment for a good job?”
“Fine, sir,” Indy said. “The difficult we do immediately. Thanks to Mr. Kilzer,” she nodded at the designer who gave her a short, choppy nod back, “…and the brigade we’re nearly repaired and significantly rearmed. But the impossible takes time. We have to get across either the Rocky Knob Gap or Betty — God help us if it’s Betty — to get to the fighting. And we can’t exactly zip up and down those slopes.”
“Well, I understand you have some experience at skiing them,” the designer said with a grin.
“Puh-leeze,” Pruitt snapped. “You weren’t there or you wouldn’t laugh. And, sir, there is the minor matter of one point two million Posleen.”
“We still have full nuclear release,” Major Mitchell said solemnly. “And we’ve been given extra reloads.”
“Fine, we can hit concentrations that are not in contact with human forces, sir,” Pruitt said reasonably. “What about the ones that are?” He gestured at the map where a line of blue and red met halfway to Rocky Knob Gap. “We can’t exactly nuke those Posleen.”
“No, but we can assault them,” Kilzer interrupted.
“Oh, yeah, now there’s a good idea!”
“No, seriously. That was the point of the upgrade. You have more frontal armor, now, than an M-1A4; from the front you’re practically invulnerable to plasma cannon fire and will even shrug off most HVM hits…”
“ ‘Practically’?” Indy interrupted. “ ‘Most’?”
“In addition there’s the squirt-gun,” the designer continued. “That should give you at least ten percent more likelihood of survival…”
“ ‘Practically’?” Pruitt said, goggle-eyed.
“Oh, quit being a baby,” Paul said. “You’re the most heavily armored thing on earth; act that way!”
Mitchell grabbed Pruitt’s collar as he lunged out of the chair but the civilian apparently had no idea what he had said. “Mr. Kilzer, we’ve just wracked up more kills on this retreat than any SheVa in-toto, much less in a single engagement. So if one of us is ‘being a baby’ it is probably for good reason.”
“I’m not saying going in there with guns blazing,” Paul argued. “Although…”
“No,” Indy snapped.
“Okay, okay, but what we’ll do is provide fire support to the division already in contact, neutralize the forces moving through Rocky Knob Gap and then move forward in bounds with the division. If we get shot up too badly to move, they’ve got most of the brigade forming in ground mobile units and they’ll come up behind you to repair.”
“And Rocky Knob?”
“I was doing some mapping while you were asleep,” the civilian said, bring up a three-D schematic of the mountains in the area. “You can’t cross Rocky Knob; we need the road for movement of the support and combat forces…”
“We refer to them all as ‘crunchies,’ ” Pruitt interjected.
“Heh, heh. Okay, we need the road for the crunchies. You’ll have to cross Betty Gap again.”
“No,” Reeves said, standing up. “I’ll quit first. I’ll desert!”
“It won’t be like the last time,” Paul said. “I’ve got a few ideas that will help and I’ll iron them out on the way.”
“I’m not going up there,” Pruitt said. “I’m not going SheVa skiing again.”
“I’ll work it out,” Paul said, sharply. “I’m good at figuring out answers to problems. I do that, you shoot Posleen ships. Or maybe you figure out the answers and we switch; I’m a pretty good gunner when it comes to it. And we can’t use Rocky Knob.”
“Any other ideas how we’re going to get to Franklin in time?” Mitchell looked around the room at the glum faces then shook his head. “I’ll get with General Keeton so we can coordinate with the crunchies down the road. Are there any other comments, questions or concerns?”
“Just one,” Pruitt said, suspiciously. “I think Mr. Kilzer has a pronoun problem. He keeps saying ‘we.’ ”
“Oh, I’m going with you,” Paul said. “All these systems are totally experimental. If anything goes wrong I want to be here to fix it.”
“Oh, hell.”
CHAPTER SIX
Rabun Gap, GA, United States of America, Sol III
1200 EDT Monday September 28, 2009 AD
Tommy looked up from his ammunition readouts as the major slid over the side of the Reapers’ fighting position.
The Reaper position was about a hundred meters behind the primary defense line, not far from the battalion headquarters hole. Like the battalion position, the Reapers had just shoveled out an area about six meters across. In their case there were two different levels, with the shallower being at the rear.
The Reapers, if they had any ammunition, could engage with a variety of heavy weapons. They had 75mm automortars for indirect fire and heavy flechette cannons for close-in work, both of these besides their anti-lander systems.
Unfortunately, in the last nine hours they had shot through every bit of ammo they carried in, gone out and scrounged up most of the additional packs and shot all of them off. They had moved forward to the line twice to support with flechettes, engaged additional landers and fired off mortars until the position was mostly protected by empty ammo boxes.
But at this point, they were pretty much flat. Tommy had about two dozen magazines left, but they weren’t compatible with any of the Reaper systems and two dozen mags weren’t going to stop the Posleen. That was not a particularly comfortable thought as he watched not only his own ammo but the rest of the battalion’s going down like a waterfall.
“Lieutenant,” Mike said as he slid into the mud in the bottom of the hole. The light rain had dropped off but it had lasted long enough to saturate everything in sight and fill all the holes with a few inches of slippery orange clay, the infamous “Georgia red clay” for which the region was unjustly famous. One of the areas that the battalion’s energy was flowing away to was simply keeping the suits from sinking into the bog.
“Major,” Tommy replied. If O’Neal wanted to go with monosyllables, fine by him.
“You been watching the battalion’s readouts?” the commander asked.
“Ayup,” the lieutenant replied.
“There is one possible way we can continue the mission. Sort of.”
“And that would be, sir?”
“You’re sounding rather cynical, Lieutenant,” the major said.
It was impossible to get anything like body language through the suits, but Tommy would swear O’Neal was amused.
“Well, sir, I like killing Posleen. Not having them kill me because I’m out of ammo. That sort of situation always annoys me.”