Let me tell you, some of the best moments of my life have been spent all by myself, in the dark, two hundred miles off the ground.
You see, I'm a cap trooper by trade. Terran Mobile Infantry, and proud of it. I love this service with all my big heart and all my dumb head. Oh, now, it's got its share of troubles, just like every army in history does. One of the main ones in the MI is that there's never enough to do. When you're on board your ship – the Eisenhower in my case – there really isn't much for a soldier to do; no ground to hold, no one to shoot at. So the powers that is tend to make things up for you to do. Busy-work, like. I mean, sure, there's some valid things, like checking and re-checking all the suits. I'm sure not gonna get in one that hasn't been warmed up by someone who knows their ears from their ankles, because that's my life on the line. But polishing bulkheads? You hear some old troopers tell the story about the Lost Company, who didn't see any action for so long that the Marines scrubbed their way straight through the hull and spaced the whole ship. It feels like that sometimes in the MI.
But when you're on the ground, boy-oh is there plenty to do. Like get shot at. That's a pretty time-consuming, all-encompassing sort of pastime right there. And if you've got some spare time, why, you might give a thought to shooting back. So when you're on the ground, you're usually fighting. And when you're in space, they give you something to do. Which is why I say that the best times of my life are when I'm two hundred miles off the ground. I'm not on the ground, I'm not in space, and there's no one around but just me.
Now, "how did I get here?" should be the first question you ask. Well, I'll answer that, but it my own good time. First, how did I get to this particular planet? That's something that I don't particularly need to know. I'm a cap trooper, so I just go where they tell me. Oh, if they told me to go burn down my own house, I'd probably think twice about it, and they'd have to give me a pretty good reason to go and wreck any human planet, but luckily that's not where I am. We're stuck in a pretty big war (geez, it's practically evolution at work by now) with the Arachnids. No one back on Earth seems to think it's big, but that's because so far Naval Command has managed to keep any of the bugs' comets from smacking into good old Terra, and no one can be bothered to worry about the minor 'skirmishes' in the outlying colony worlds. But things are gonna heat up right soon here, so we need all the friends we can get.
Which is why I'm floating high over K'lai. That's a Skinny world. The Skinnies aren't exactly our friends, and you'd think that once I get down there, they'd be even less so. Which is true. Right now they're what Intel is calling 'belligerent neutrals'. They'd rather not have any of this shooting going on, so they're trying to let everyone know how they feel about it. Which includes not cooperating a lick with us nice, polite Terrans. What they don't realize is that the Bugs don't really care whether or not someone wants a war; they'll deliver one anyway, C.O.D. So we're just trying to do a little aggressive persuasion to get the Skinnies to stop bein' victims and start bein' soldiers. Plus – and this is the real reason if y'ask me – K'lai's got enough asteroids to make for a decent shipyard or two, and some real potential as a refueling stop on the way to Bug territory.
So that explains why I'm over K'lai. As to how I got precisely here, that's easy too. I got strapped into my suit, someone stuck me in an oversized egg, and the Eisenhower shot me from the God-almighty-biggest cannon you've ever seen. Simple as that.
So that gets us up to date. I'm moving at terminal velocity toward K'lai, surrounded by half a meter of ablative shielding, electronics, and radar jamming. If all went according to plan, the Ike laid down most of my squad mates somewhere near me, and the rest of my platoon within at least spitting distance. But I'll just have to trust to fate when it comes to that, because my suit's powered down and I'm falling fast.
The outer layer burns off pretty quickly once the atmosphere starts thickening, and the feel of the outer shell going is pretty much no different from the normal shakes you get by hitting the air. But once the outer layer is off, then you can tell. The brakes on the second shell start to bite and things get really choppy for a while there, until one by one those burn up and slide off as well. As soon as they're off, the inner shell of the egg lights up all its electronics and give the suit a shake to wake it up as well.
This is the first a cap trooper really hears about where he is in relation to the ground. The last layer's the most elegant – there's a rangefinder radar at your feet, and three 'chutes at your head. Now, you'd think that someone would be a little worried about a radar advertising their presence, because someone else would just have to lob a few missiles – passive tracking, even – and that'd be the end of 'em. But two things: first, the radar isn't that strong, and it's certainly not very focused. And two, between all the parts of your egg that you've lost, everything that's come off your buddies' eggs, and the dummies that your ship throws out before and after you, the sky is such an awful mess of tinfoil and confetti that bees couldn't find flowers in it, much less a missile finding me.
At this point, I was about ten miles off the ground. On K'lai – much like on Earth – that meant that a 'chute wouldn't have enough air to even open correctly, let alone slow me down at all. Besides, computers know better 'n' me when it comes to that, so I let them decide. It takes a degree to make a computer, and it sure didn't take one to make me, so I figure the computer's got a better head on it than I do. I didn't have too long before the third shell popped the first 'chute and it jerked me short and hard, then tore off. The second one jerked a little gentler and lasted a little longer, and the third one looked like it would be in it for the long haul. I thumbed the proximity reading again – two and a half miles – and decided to blow the 'chute and the shell.
Explosives blew the bolts holding the suit to the shell, then blew the shell into eight neat chunks, sending them out and away. They're built to look as much like an armored man as a plain hunk of metal possibly can, and add to the overall confusion up above. But geez, is it ever nice to be free of 'em. I spread out my limbs and stretched for a few seconds, then spread myself open face down and took a look around.
We were coming down on the capital city of K'lai, and my platoon's job was to grab the spaceport and sit on it until the Skinnies squealed or some other cap troopers cut in on the dance. The spaceport was dead south of the city, and a little mountain range separated it from the capital. It started in the west, grew to a respectable fifteen hundred feet high or so, then joined the huge north-south mountain range to the east of K'lai that the briefing had dubbed the Himalayas. Another platoon – Rodgers' Raiders - was going to be more offensively-minded, trying to neutralize any threats in the capital and then hold the river that meandered out of the Himalayas, east to west, through the city. Naval Intelligence didn't really know what kind of defenses the Skinnies were mounting, but the range of strength they gave meant that one platoon could handle the city's south half, but not the south and the north both.
I chose just the wrong moment to flip down my infrared snoopers, having forgotten entirely that Lt. Alderman back aboard the Eisenhower was firing a few 'counter-insurgency' rounds. I don't really know why there were called that, but I can tell you what they did. They made a huge noise, an even bigger flash, and did nothing else. One of my instructors once explained the 'counter-insurgency' tactics to me like this: "All we're doing is advertising, loud and clear, that anyone with anything valuable had better keep it out of sight, if they don't want it shot off." Given that it was just before sunrise, I doubted anyone would've been awake to be scared, but I bet it worked anyway. These things'd wake you up, scare you silly, then make you pass out again from fear.
I switched the proximity warning over to 'audio' and listened as the pings built up in my audio circuit. I keyed the first 'chute from my suit, which snapped me feet-first to the ground, and let me kill some time while my retinas grew back. After I unloaded that first 'chute, I flipped the snoopers up and took another look around.
From my briefing, I knew I was coming down as close to on target as can be expected (God bless sweet little Lt. Alderman) which was just perfect for me. I'd been sitting on an 'assistant squad leader' post for the last two missions, both of which were just uneventful enough to mean that I basically had never held the job before. Tight formation in the air meant a tight formation when you touched down, and was I ever glad of that. But I didn't have long to relish it as the ground was crawling toward me alarmingly fast. I popped the second chute at a thousand yards, rode it down to a hundred, and made a final landing on my jets. Nice and pretty.
Our platoon was over-sized for this mission, since the planners had been nice and given Lt. Weber two heavy weapons squads to play with. Since we weren't sure of how they'd be needed, both of them were coming down between the little mountain range – briefing had nicknamed it the Alps – and the spaceport. There were about ten miles of open land around the spaceport, and that was where the two heavy weapons squads, Weber's command and control squad, and another standard Marauder squad was coming down. Me and my boys were up north, closer to the Alps, with Sgt. Kristoff's squad, the 3rd, and the last two of the platoons were coming down as close to the spaceport as Lt. Alderman felt comfortable with. And believe me, she's plenty comfortable with up-close-and-personal.
I keyed my ambient electronics to full as soon as I touched down, and that's when the suit really lit up. Friend-or-foe radio and tightbeam laser pulses shot out, spotting every MI suit around me and lighting up my mini-map just above my forehead inside my helmet. Eight of the nine in my squad were within five hundred yards of me, which is practically a campfire in terms of suit warfare, and Jonesy was closing the distance quickly (why was it always him?).
Sgt. Bright opened the channel to the whole squad. "Glad to see we're all here. The Lieutenant doesn't have any threat assessments for the moment, so let's go find some. North, by twos, two hundred yards separation. Sit on the Alps west of the pass. Go!" he called. Two hundred yards was pretty much dancin' with each other, and that meant our Y-racks had to be off. At two hundred yards any grenade your suit tossed would roll to a stop just about at your buddy's feet. Just as well: this wasn't a raid, we were here to stay for a bit, and that meant conserving ammo.
The other major difference between this and a raid was armament. I'd raided two Skinny planets before – one to cause havoc, the other a legitimate snatch-and-grab to get some of their Bug research – and both those times we didn't have rifles. Rockets, H-bombs, plenty of grenades, the Y-racks, and flamers for anti-personnel, but just things that made a lot of noise or a lot of damage. This time, we all had our assault rifles with us, and that makes any cap trooper feel warm and fuzzy.
I tried lifting an assault rifle when I was out of my armor once. Once was enough. For one thing, it's about four feet long. For another, it's about a hundred fifty pounds. I can stick my pointer finger down the barrel, whatever that means for the caliber. And all the munitions we carry in our Y-racks are compatible with the launcher on the underside of the rifle. Plus, it hooks into the HUD in the suit's helmet and gives me distance, bearing, and leading shots on targets. Outside of my suit, my gun is my best friend. Inside my suit, well, there's pretty much just room for me.
Anyway, I peeled off with my partner Pvt. DiMaglio and started bouncing north. We were a few hundred yards west of the main road that ran between the capital and the spaceport. I popped down my snoopers and took a peek while DiMaglio and I bounced north in long, powered strides. There were some ground vehicles littered along the roadway. Most were stopped, a few were moving a bit too fast, but either way they'd paid attention to the big bang a few moments earlier. A few sets of mag-train tracks ran between the opposing lanes, and I had to fight the urge to lob a grenade into the middle of the mess. Battle, not raid, I thought. We're here to stay for a bit.
The terrain was all flat and dry on the way north, with the occasional land-intensive industry on the way up. I spotted things that on Terra would've been wastewater treatment plants and maybe a few salt farms, but the occasional Skinnies we saw didn't seem too interested in us. The skies were beginning to light up with anti-aircraft fire (didn't they know we were all on the ground?) and sirens were wailing intermittently. I flicked my audio to wide-open passive and made a quick pass through the circuits; Skinnies were chattering excitedly all over the place, so someone had realized we were here.
Bright's voice crackled in my ear, and a quick glance at my HUD told me he was using the personal channel to his assistant squad leader. "Dean, keep your eyes peeled for somewhere for the artillery."
"Sir?" I asked, not quite sure what he was really asking for.
"The lieutenant says he probably won't need the heavy weapons down at the spaceport. So if he gives them to us in the north, we'll make a choke point out of Alps, right?" Bright's voice seemed to request sainthood for having to make it so clear.
"Yessir. Direct fire, or indirect?" I asked him. I thought it was a pretty intelligent question.
His tone ceded that it wasn't the most unintelligent question I could've thought up. "Hmm, both. Somewhere defensible on the south side of the ridge for the indirect, and whatever you can get – away from civilians – for the direct."
All the while DiMaglio and I had been bouncing north with a pair from our squad to our left and the other five off to our right. Bright was moving north along the road, almost holding hands with Kristoff from the other squad assigned to the Alps, and the rest of Kristoff's squad was spread out to the east of the road, doing the same as my boys. Kristoff and Bright both had propaganda recordings in Skinny language that Naval Intelligence had given them, basically calling on the civilian population to surrender and telling them they would not be harmed. Hell, if I met me in a dark alley, I'd sure surrender.
In the foothills of the Alps, our suits started picking up a lot more movement. We were passing into a vaguely residential area – low cost housing for the spaceport and wastewater crews, maybe. Mostly small two- or three-story buildings, lots of landscaping. Still plenty of room for us to land and take off, and none of the Skinnies were putting up any trouble. They were easy to spot, too. A Skinny in civilian clothes lights up infrared snoopers like a Christmas tree, but they've got some thermal-dampening armor and things so that their infantry aren't quite that obvious.
Once onto the slope of the ridge proper, there weren't no more Skinnies and there weren't no more houses either. I guessed that it was probably a nature preserve or something, and at the top of the last jump that put DiMaglio and I on the ridgeline, I took a look around. Sure enough, solid blue-green trees and shrubs all the way along the east-west ridge of the Alps. Down in the northern foothills there were some houses, nicer-looking ones this time, but we were all clear of population along the ridge.
The last of the chaff from the capsules we'd all been wearing was fluttering out of the air, and the surface-to-air missiles were finally dying down. Way off to the east, in the high eastern mountains we were calling the Himalayas, an instillation was still throwing off enough radar and sonar tracking that it glowed in my EM warfare HUD. I figured anything with that much radar – active radar, no less – was either a spaceport or a SAM installation. And we knew where the spaceport was, so it had to be an anti-air site. I didn't have anything that could hit it, but Bright, as squad leader, did (I was jealous) and he'd probably want to shoot it before Kristoff – the other squad leader – had a chance to.
I kicked my jaw switch over to the 'superior' channel and told Bright, "Hey, anti-air installation, bearing 65 or so, eighteen miles."
"Hey, you're getting better. I was expecting you to tell me about it after the explosion," Bright said jokingly.
"Wha?" I began, then stopped as two things happened. One, I realized that he'd already fired a missile. Two, the anti-air installation realized he'd fired a missile as well, as the pee-wee nuke detonated on the hill and outshone the rising sun for just a moment. The well-known mushroom convection current was building as he chuckled at me over the radio. "Hey, buck up, Dean. That was a good target. Kristoff didn't even see it until my nuke pointed it out for him." Well, I figured beating one squad leader to the punch wasn't bad. "You find those artillery sites yet?"
"No sir," I answered quickly. "On it." I jaw-switched over to the area-broadcast and turned the power down so that only DiMaglio would hear me. "Alright, let's look around for artillery spots." DiMaglio answered affirmative with a click of his tongue, and I left the channel ready and waiting as the two of us began bouncing around the hillside in a circle-sweep pattern, radar cutting a wide downward swath to give a clear map of the ground.
I heard the light 'pings' while my suit's impact sensor told me something was going on. The sound was like someone ringing a cheap glass with their spoon before they make a toast, and I knew from basic that I was being hit by small-arms fire. Now, I don't much care in a suit – it would take a few really lucky shots to worry me – but I just have a moral aversion to being shot at, right? I spun toward the shots and took a look, all the while jumping so that I wouldn't be where I had been.
I didn't get anything with a visual sweep, so I slipped my snoopers down and looked again. Remember, I was in the air for all of this. Time is the one thing you never get back, and an MI who can't multi-task on three channels is usually a dead one. The snoopers lit up a handful of Skinnies outside some building with a watchtower next to it. A park ranger station? Local hunting club? I didn't really know if they were military or civilian, but they were shooting at me. I decided to defer the decision anyway.
"Hey, Sarge, I found some locals. A little belligerent." Another shot hit me while I was broadcasting.
"Are they shooting at you?"
"Yeah, but . . ."
"Then they're not civilians." Bright clicked off the transmission, and I checked my HUD.
DiMaglio was seven hundred yards west southwest of me, and there wasn't another cap trooper within a thousand yards. I reached up, plucked a grenade from my Y-rack, and lobbed it in the general direction of the Skinnies while bouncing perpendicular to the grenade's path. As soon as it touched off, I flicked the snoopers up and closed on the location. Decent-sized hole, no one around. The watchtower was still standing, and I went over to it to see if maybe it would do as an elevated artillery location. I gave a little hop and landed on the top, but the thing groaned once and started toppling. I got off before my gyros protested and that was that, because if it wasn't going to hold me, it sure wasn't going to hold one heavy weapon and three heavy weapons specialists.
"Dean, check this out," DiMaglio called. I always keep one eye on my tactical HUD, so I didn't even have to check his bearing before I leapt out towards him. I was there in six bounds. He was perched on the end of a good-sized rock outcropping, mostly flat, that pointed a little bit east of north, almost straight at the city. Steep sides of twenty yards ended in the ground below, so that a cap trooper would be able to jump up, but not much else. Forest around it gave some cover to retreat into, but it was pretty exposed. Still, might be good for the artillery.
"Might do. Beacon it, tell Sgt. Bright, and let's look for a spot for the mortar."
We did just that, and spent another fifteen minutes bouncing around that hill. Occasional orders from Bright kept us from stepping on each other's toes, and he switched our pairs' search areas every five minutes to give us new terrain to look at. But after twenty minutes of 'scouting for artillery locations', I was pretty certain we were just killing time.
Boy, was I right.