Stewart would probably be the best choice for a company commander. He was naturally charismatic, he had a good feel for tactical, and, hell, operational maneuver, and he didn’t have Duncan’s… problems.
So why did he keep thinking he should put Duncan in command of Charlie Company?
He took off his helmet and spit his dip out on the ground, looking around at the suits. The whole battalion was simply fragged. Half of the personnel had gone to sleep where they dropped, Provigil be damned. He wasn’t much better, which was why he was considering putting a combat-shocked officer in command of a company.
Duncan, along with Stewart and Pappas, had been with him for years, since his first company command. But before that Duncan had also been on Diess and then was transferred to Barwhon. Something about the fighting on Barwhon had just… snapped him. He was fine calling in fire and coming up with really elegant ways to manage complicated battles, but put him in the line and he just… closed down.
Duncan had a responsibility streak a mile wide, though. Putting him in charge of Charlie Company would do one of two things. It would either break him out of it or shut him down permanently.
And, frankly, if he went down, that would leave Stewart in place to take over battalion command. Which just might save everyone’s butts.
“Duncan,” he said finally. “I need you over here for a second.”
“This really sucks,” Shari said as she stumbled over another piece of debris.
The suits had cleared a path up the road to the house, but there wasn’t much they could do in the valley; it was just too torn up.
The Rabun Gap Valley had once been a rather pleasant place, its hillsides lined with trees and the valley itself filled with a mix of light industrial plants and cropland. But repeated nuclear-class explosions had changed all that.
The trees on the hillsides had not only been knocked down but in many cases thrown around, some of them out into the valley. Along with them were the remains of the corps that had died there, shattered hulks of tanks, howitzers flipped end for end and sticking out of the ground, bits and pieces of trucks, buildings and people scattered across the ground in a crazy quilt. Added to this were ripples of soil and craters thrown up by the explosions, some of which had happened low enough to dig into the ground to the bedrock.
Through this nuclear nightmare the suits and the unarmored humans stumbled with their massive loads. The suits had it fairly easy; with unlimited power they could practically float over obstacles. The humans, though, had to struggle under, over and around them.
“Don’t knock it,” Tommy said nervously, looking to the east. “I think we’d have had company before now if it wasn’t for all of this.”
“The Posleen should be able to plow through this,” Mueller said then cursed as he fell when one leg plunged into a hole. The weight of the battlebox on his back pushed him face down in the ground and for a moment he couldn’t get the angle to straighten up. “Shit.”
“No lying out, Master Sergeant,” Tommy said with a chuckle. He set down one of the boxes he was carrying and pulled the massive NCO out of the hole like a cork out of a bottle.
“You know, Lieutenant, you could positively get on a guy’s nerves,” Mueller said with a rueful grin.
“When we started across we came from down valley,” Sunday continued. “There’s a… pile, sort of ripple, of dirt and debris down the end of the valley. I looked at it from up on the hill and it looks like a lander must have just about been grounded when it blew up. Anyway, between that ridge and the fallen trees on all the slopes they’re going to have a hell of a time getting up here for a while.”
“Hmm,” Mosovich said. “So unless they come from the west, the cache should be okay.”
“Or from the north,” Mueller said. “There’s a road up there, too.”
“They’d have to be pretty lost,” Wendy chuckled. “That’s a lousy road.”
“ ‘S’ truth,” Mosovich said. “And good news.” He let out a hiss as a ridge of soil slipped out from under his feet. He looked up at the mountain they were supposed to ascend — it was covered in fallen trees — and sighed. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
“Sergeant Major, thank you for helping us get this gear up here.”
Mosovich had never met the famous Mike O’Neal and wasn’t particularly impressed with what he saw. The suit was… weird, with some sort of demon hologram on the front. And the major’s unit was sprawled across the back side of Black Mountain like they weren’t going to be going anywhere soon; most of the suits were flat on their backs. After humping all this shit up the hill, the sight of all the armored combat suits apparently crapped out was not particularly pleasing.
“Yes, sir,” Mosovich replied correctly. “I’m not actually in command, Captain Elgars is.”
“Sort of,” Elgars said, dumping the battlebox she had carried up the hill. “What’s the situation, Major?”
“As soon as we can get the suits powered back up, we’ll be ready to move back into the Gap.” As he was speaking, a team of technician suits was connecting power leads to the antimatter generators. “Since this is standard ammo, as long as it holds out we shouldn’t have nearly as much need for power. And with the additional AM packs we’ll be able to fight for at least two days. Assuming we survive, of course.”
The suit was a blank image, but something about the body posture bespoke irony.
“I’m glad we could be of service, sir,” Mosovich commented, dryly.
“I know it looks sort of stupid to have a company of ACS flaked out on a hill,” O’Neal said, removing his helmet. “But we had to carry some of the suits the last hundred meters. We were that out of power. If I thought I could have gone, I would have. But Sunday and his Reapers were the only ones with enough power left to get to the cache. Again, thank you for your help.”
Mosovich watched as some of the suit gel slid off the major’s hair and arched out to drop into the open helmet. The officer was younger than he’d expected. He was a rejuv, of course, but something about him told Mosovich that he also was young, comparatively speaking. And tired.
“You gotten any rest lately, sir?” the NCO said, gruffly.
“That is what Provigil is for, Sergeant Major,” O’Neal answered with a frown as he looked out at the valley. “You know I grew up here, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir,” Mosovich hesitated for a moment. “I… knew your father. We had friends in common. I went up to the farm.”
“I understand his body was missing,” Mike said, reaching into an armored pouch and extracting a can of Skoal. “Dip?”
“No, sir, thank you,” the sergeant major replied. “Yes. Cally said that she had found his body at the bunker. But when we got there it was gone.”
“Well, at least Cally is okay,” Mike replied. “You need to get going. We’re going to rearm and fuel fast. And then we’re going to call in the mother of all nuclear strikes on this… situation. The inner cache is made out of plasteel armor and should hold out, but you may get buried. I’ll inform Fleet where you are so… when we retake this area you can get dug out.”
“How bad can it be?” Elgars asked. “The outer cache took, what, two blasts already?”