CHAPTER TWELVE
945 kilometers south-east of Lograin, 03H43, 14th of June, 2771
Enveloped in darkness, Toni awoke to a persistent beeping sound. Groggy with sleep, he decided to ignore the sound in the hope that it would eventually go away. Instead it was replaced by a compelling whoop suspiciously similar to the alert one would hear inside an armored Suit.
Then he remembered.
Opening his eyes to find yet more darkness, he ordered his unit to activate. Eyelids still sticky with sleep, Toni finally gained audio and visual, and he blinked furiously at the written warning on his virtual foreground.
ALARM MODE ACTIVATED. SIGNAL SOURCE ASC P1 S4
Feeling a chill reach into his bones, Toni inquired over the comm.
“Brother One, here Unit Seven, over.”
There was no delay in the answer.
“Shut your ass, Seven, I’ll get to you in a mike.”
A particularly loud report suddenly made itself heard, jolting him fully awake more quickly than anything else could have. Moving his helm around, he tried to lay eyeballs on the source of the explosion, finding only that the remainder of his platoon, still facing inwards into their circle, were trying to do the exact same thing.
“Here LOGIS Prime. All units about-face and hunker down where you are.” It was the lieutenant, and he sounded angry.
Toni hurried to comply, whirling fast around his center of gravity and putting his kneepad to the ground a full half-second before the rest. He gripped his rifle firmly and strained his ears, trying to pick up every sound.
All remained silent, except for the occasional nervous chirp of birds woken by the report. He wondered if perhaps they were hearing something he could not.
He increased audio sensitivity, gradually becoming aware of far-off popping sounds, followed by a second-long roar.
Somewhere far off, a unit of the ASC was firing thirty millimeter cannon.
Toni tried to keep his breathing slow and steady as the seconds passed by, his effort sabotaged by a particularly loud concussion from the south-east. The unit to Toni’s left flinched at the sound, the Suit producing a shudder in the act. It was Hirum, and he had probably augmented his audio sensitivity too. Toni dragged his ocular mouse to the communications panel on his virtual display and looked at his options there, finding that the lieutenant had kept his word. He activated a private comm link between Units Seven and Fourteen.
“Yo, Fourteen, you believe this?”
“Toni?” a disbelieving voice sounded over the comm.
“Yours truly. No worries mate, Grimm’s with the sec-leader now. You’re with me from now on.”
“Really?” there was an almost childish note in Hirum’s voice.
“You OK with that?”
“Hell yeah, Toni, ‘course I am. Are we on an encrypted channel?”
“Yeah. I, uh, took a look at the communications panel and realized your unit is on it. Maybe the pairs can parley privately now.”
“Oh, that’s great. That’s more than great, ‘cause I’m freaking out here ...”
“Listen, Fourteen. Don’t do that, OK? All we need to do is what we’re told. It’ll all work out, alright?”
A monotonous voice cut off their conversation.
“LOGIS, here LOGIS Prime, standby to receive operational updates from Wild Rose. This is the only time I’ll be saying this. From now on these messages will be keeping you posted on current events.”
There was general silence for a few moments.
“Uh, Fourteen, maybe we’d better keep the comms to the minimum, before we miss something like that ...”
“Roger that.”
A few moments later the Op-update appeared before Toni’s eyes.
» ASC 1ST PLATOON, 4TH SECTION, ON PERIMETER PATROL 5 KM EAST-SOUTH-EAST OF MAIN FORCE ENCOUNTERED UNKNOWN NUMBER OF LAND VEHICLES. FOUR SUCH VEHICLES HAVE BEEN DESTROYED, REMAINDER HAVE RETREATED DUE EAST. MAIN FORCE WILL ASSEMBLE PREDETERMINED BATTLE-LINE WITH VANGUARD 500 METERS DUE EAST FOR IMINENT CONTACT PROGRESSION.
He read the message twice over before banishing it to his mission log. Then it finally began to sink in that an ASC section had contacted and wasted four enemy vehicles, and the blood in his veins began to flow faster and hotter. The silence over the comm was broken once again.
“LOGIS, here LOGIS Prime. Form up at the tree-line facing east. Sec One in the center, Secs Two and Three on left and right flank respectively, over.”
All units immediately obeyed, their drivers somewhat less hesitant than they had been previously. Toni’s augmented hearing began to pick up a multitude of APUs coming to life all around the forest. The entire ASC was prepping for locomotion, their turbines working furiously to increase the gas pressure in their pressure vessels, their drivers anxious to join the comrades who had just blooded themselves.
The Mocas moved towards their starting points, their motions those of an undersea diver walking on the seabed. The Hammerheads, however, were fast and fluid as they occupied their positions, the members of LOGIS reaching their line about twenty seconds afterwards.
That was one of the very few things Toni knew about the Hammerhead; its closed system forewent air in favor of germane, mostly because the gas was far more fluid than ordinary air, thus making PAM inflation and deflation much quicker, thus improving pseudo-muscular performance, and thus increasing Suit agility and reflexes. He put the thought out of his mind since it depressed him, thinking instead on the opposite side of that particular coin. If the Hammerhead’s exterior pressure vessel were to be breached, it would only be a matter of time before complete locomotive failure took place, since the system wasn’t designed to work with ordinary air.
The wait persisted and Toni was once again forced to consider Dunn’s advice at the shuttle platform. Trying to relax, he found himself unable to do so, and began to compulsively check his operational status instead.
Discreetly he confirmed that his main weapon was safed and checked its serviceability. The sleek rifle’s slender, fluted barrel was mostly hidden inside its ample hand-guard. The hand-guard also concealed an automatic anti-personnel shotgun, the fifteen millimeter cartridges it used having been designed to release twenty-four flechettes upon firing. The shotgun’s two hundred round helical magazine was presently empty, that particular caliber no longer in production.
As ordered by Main Force Ops, his sentry guns were at the moment deactivated, their employment dependant on his voicing a key-word while eyeing the appropriate icon on his display. Knowing his own tendency for forgetfulness, Toni recorded the key-word on a semi-transparent sticky note and dragged it below the icon. When activated, those guns would fire upon any nearby hostile forces and even upon incoming projectiles with twenty millimeter fragmentation grenades, supposedly creating a safe-zone around his unit.
The only problem was that sometimes the Moca’s CPU got a little confused about exactly who the enemy was, hence the Main Force order.
The SABERO rocket pods were preset in the same fashion, but he set them instead to launch by rifle trigger for faster engagement. There were two rockets per pod, allowing him to engage only four targets at best. He had been surprised to discover, however, that both pods together were worth about as much as his Suit’s production cost, quite the thing to boost his confidence in their effectiveness.
“LOGIS, here LOGIS Prime, increase unit spacing to forty paces and standby for lomo,” the lieutenant sounded over the comm.
Toni didn’t budge an inch. Belatedly he realized he was at the square center of the progression line. The more rational part of his mind remembered that enemy contact could take place along any part of its extension, but still he would have much preferred to be in the flanks. Everything he had ever learned regarding conventional combat tactics made clear that it was the center that usually took the most punishment, their traditional role being to fix the enemy while the flanks became mobile to do the greater part of the actual killing.
He consoled himself with the fact th
at there was an armored company half a kilometer ahead shielding their movement.
He had barely begun to calm down when the the electrifying order finally came through.
“Attention to all LOGIS units. Locomotion. I repeat, locomotion.”
Toni’s footpads began to move without being having told to, his ears catching the sound of gigantic footfalls as nineteen armored Suits crossed the tree line into the forest beyond.