Directly ahead, the field began sloping downward. Avery knew all he had to do was crawl a few more meters and the wheat would start to thin. This would give him good line of sight to the recruits' defenses and put him in position to execute his part of the assault he'd planned with Staff Sergeant Byrne. But the thinner cover would also give the militiamen the best chance they'd had all day to spot Avery, and he planned to stay put until he was sure of his advantage.
Slowly, Avery reached between his legs, undid his rifle bag's plastic clasps, and withdrew his BR55. After the fight aboard the freighter, Avery had spent plenty of time with the weapon at the garrison range, assessing its strengths compared to the recruits' standard-issue MA5 assault rifle. The BR55 shared the MA5's bullpup design (magazine slot and breech positioned behind the trigger), but it came with an optical scope and fired larger nine-point-five millimeter, semi armor-piercing rounds. Technically, the BR55 was a designated marksman's rifle. But it was the closest thing to a sniping weapon in Lt. Commander alCygni's arsenal, and Avery knew from his work on the range that it was deadly accurate out to nine hundred meters, much farther than the MA5.
He had given one of al-Cygni's three other BR55s to Jenkins. Byrne had kept one for himself, and awarded the final battle rifle to a balding, middle-aged recruit named Critchley, providing 2nd platoon with its own marksman capability. During their last session on the range, Avery had watched Jenkins and Critchley drill nice tight groups into five hundred meter targets.
And he hoped—to his own disadvantage—they would be just as accurate in today's live-fire exercise.
If only it was as simple as teaching them to shoot, Avery frowned. He removed a magazine from his black, ballistic nylon assault-vest and quietly slid it into his rifle. But being accurate didn't make you a killer. Which is what combat was all about: killing the enemy before it killed you.
Avery was sure the aliens understood that (he had the scar to prove it), but the recruits had no idea what combat was really like, and that was something he, Byrne, and Ponder knew they needed to fix ASAP.
The problem was there were too many things about the aliens the marines didn't know. And in the end they agreed they would have to make a few basic assumptions—about their enemy and their men—if the militia was ever going to put up an effective resistance: first, the aliens would return with a larger and more capable force; second, combat would be terrestrial and defensive. Given enough time, Avery was hopeful the militia could be trained to sustain a guerilla campaign. But their third and final assumption was that time was a luxury they lacked.
Avery and the others agreed: The aliens would be back long before the militiamen learned anything but the basics of small-unit combat.
Of course, the Captain and his Staff Sergeants told the recruits none of this. Instead they continued to promote the falsehood of a visiting CA delegation and a possible Insurrectionist attack. None of them liked lying to their men. But they calmed their consciences with the knowledge that the recruits would need to master the same basic skills of concealment, coordination, and communication if they were going to have a chance against their alien foe.
Avery heard the distant buzz of electric engines. He glanced over his shoulder. Epsilon Indi now hung so low in the sky that even wearing his glasses he could only stare at the star for a few seconds before shutting his eyes in a watery wince. Avery grimaced with satisfaction. As he'd planned, any recruits patrolling the complex's western perimeter fence would have the exact same problem—and none of them were wearing glasses. Which might have been an unfair advantage if Avery and Byrne weren't already outnumbered thirty-six to one.
As the buzzing engines drew close, Avery tensed and prepared to slither forward. Keep your eyes open. Expect the unexpected, he had warned his platoon. For their sake, he hoped they'd listened. But if they hadn't … "Creeper, this is crawler," Avery whispered into this throat mic. "Mow them down."
They would learn a valuable lesson all the same.
"Smells pretty good." Jenkins placed his cheek against his BR55's hard plastic stock, and shot Forsell a sideways glance. "What is it?"
The recruits lay side by side, facing the reactor complex's only gate: a break in the southern run of the three-meter-high, chain-link fence that surrounded the facility.
Forsell took a sloppy bite from a foil-wrapped energy bar. "Honey hazelnut." He chewed and swallowed without pulling his eyes from his spotting scope. "Want some?"
"Any part of it you haven't licked?" Jenkins asked.
"No."
"Nice."
Forsell shrugged apologetically and stuffed the rest of the bar into his mouth.
It was his own fault he was hungry, Jenkins knew. He was so geared up about today's exercise he'd barely eaten breakfast in the garrison mess.
In fact, he'd been so certain the Staff Sergeants would attack when the recruits had their heads buried in their lunches, he'd skipped that meal entirely—let the much larger Forsell take whatever he wanted from his meal ready to eat (MRE). Unfortunately, Forsell had taken everything, and now Jenkins had nothing in his stomach but anxious bile.
The two recruits wore helmets that covered their ears, swept low over their brows, and were painted to match their mottled, olive drab fatigues. The color would have served them well in the surrounding wheat, but wasn't as useful in their current location: the roof of a two-story polycrete tower in the center of the complex that covered the reactor as well as Mack's data center.
A high-pitched alert chimed from a speaker in Jenkins' helmet. Under Captain Ponder's supervision, the recruits had staked motion trackers all around the perimeter, switching the pole-mounted units to their highest sensitivity. While this gave them coverage beyond one thousand meters, the trackers kept pinging ghosts: swarms of honeybees, flocks of starlings— and now a flight of JOTUN dusters.
Squinting past Forsell, Jenkins watched a trio of the needle-nosed, thin-winged planes buzz the western wheat. The dusters had been making long, serpentine passes all day, spraying a top dressing of fungicide. But this was their closest pass yet.
A trailing white cloud billowed toward the complex, prompting the twelve recruits of 2nd platoon's bravo squad (2/B) guarding the western fence to turn away from the drifting chemicals, cover their mouths, and cough. These weren't indications of any real, physical distress (Jenkins had applied enough of the organic compounds to his family's own crops to know it was perfectly safe to breathe), but rather expressions of the recruits' fatigue and discontent.
"What time you got?" Jenkins asked.
Forsell squinted at Epsilon Indi. "Sixteen thirty. Give or take."
Almost sunset, Jenkins thought. "Where the hell are they?"
The rules of the exercise were simple: to win, either side needed to eliminate half the other.
This meant Johnson and Byrne would have to drop thirty-six recruits while the recruits only had to neutralize one of them. With the odds stacked so heavily against the Staff Sergeants, it had seemed likely they would try to attack early, before the recruits got settled.
When the two of them had torn out of the complex's gate in their Warthog a little after 0900, the recruits had quickly divided into their squads—three in each platoon—and rushed to secure different sectors of the complex.
Along with the rest of one-alpha squad (1/A), Jenkins and Forsell had hustled to the reactor tower. The weather-beaten structure looked a bit like a birthday cake: The second of its two circular stories had a smaller diameter than the first and was topped with a cluster of candlelike aerials for Mack's maser and other COM devices. The tower was the only above ground building in the complex, and the only building for hundreds of kilometers in all directions.
Jenkins and Forsell had climbed up two flights of ladders to the second-story roof and gone prone—the most stable stance for shooting, if you could afford the loss of mobility. Resting his BR55 across his rucksack for additional support, Jenkins had eased into his rifle scope just in time to see the Staff Sergeants' Warthog turn off the reactor complex's paved access road and head South down the highway toward Utgard. Adrenaline pumping, Jenkins had immediately pulled his battle rifle's charging handle, cycling a round into the chamber. He had thumbed the fire-select switch to single-shot, tensed his finger on the trigger, and then … nothing. Just hour after hour of blazing heat.
The recruits had quickly begun to grouse that the real purpose of the exercise was to see how long they could stand being suckers. An overweight and outspoken 1/A recruit named Osmo theorized that Johnson and Byrne had gone to Utgard for cold beer in an air-conditioned bar, leaving Epsilon Indi's broiling light to win the exercise for them.
FCPO Healy had told them all to "shut it," emphasizing that as long as they kept their helmets on and stayed hydrated they'd be safe from heat stroke. For his part, Captain Ponder had remained in his Warthog, parked in the shade of a portable triage tent near the front gate, quietly smoking his Sweet William cigars.
"A beer would be nice," Jenkins murmured, listening to the JOTUN dusters' engines fade.
Even though he'd spent the day on his stomach hardly moving, sweat had poured out of him.
There were at least ten empty water bottles scattered between his and Forsell's boots. And Jenkins was still thirsty.
"Eyes on the big one," Forsell announced, lazily sweeping his scope to the east. "Again."
Turning to follow Forsell's gaze, Jenkins saw a single JOTUN combine: a giant machine painted dark blue with yellow detail stripes. Its three pairs of oversized wheels bucked up and down as it rolled over a gentle ridge. Though the combine was at least a kilometer distant, Jenkins had no trouble hearing the low rumble of its three-thousand horsepower, ethanol- electric engine as it began devouring the wheat on the down-slope.
The combine had spent the day mowing the eastern fields in wide swaths perpendicular to the complex, shuddering the ground as it neared the perimeter fence. At first, this had unnerved some of the recruits. They'd all seen JOTUNs, of course, but what was essentially a fifty-meter tall and one-hundred-fifty-meter long lawn mower triggered a pretty basic urge to flee—even when you knew an AI as capable as Mack had control of its circuits.
But now, as the combine again bore down on the complex, the only thing that looked nervous was the wheat. Magnified in Jenkins' rifle scope, the stalks trembled before the whirring tines of the combine's rotary header, almost as if they had some knowledge of their imminent threshing.
"I'm telling you. That's a series four," Forsell said, continuing a debate they'd kept up all day.
"Nope," Jenkins countered. "See the gondolas?"
Forsell peered through his scope at a line of angular metal bins on wheels that only looked small because they were trailing directly behind the JOTUN. "Yeah …"
"They're collecting from the rear."
"So?"
"So that's a series five feature. Four's dumped to the sides."
Forsell thought about that for a second then gave up with an awkward admission, "It's been a few seasons since we upgraded."
Jenkins winced. He'd forgotten Forsell came from a modest family. Not only did Forsell's parents own fewer acres, but their soy also sold for much less than the Jenkins' corn and other grains. In all likelihood, Forsell's parents were still getting by with a handful of used series twos.
"Fives aren't worth it," Jenkins said, watching the gondolas fill up then hurry back over the rise to a nearby maglev depot. "Hybrid engines are way too expensive, unless you're processing your own ethanol—"
"Hey. We got something." Forsell's body tensed. "Just pulled off the highway."
Jenkins realigned south. A single vehicle—a green and white taxi—was approaching the complex at high speed. For a moment it disappeared down a dip in the access road.
"Think it's them?" Forsell asked.
"Dunno." Jenkins swallowed dryly. "Better send the word."
"All squads! Got a vehicle coming in!"
"This a joke, Forsell?" Stisen growled over the COM. Byrne had promoted the dark-haired constable to squad leader of 2/A, and assigned him to guard the complex gate. "It's too hot for any of your bullshit."
"See for yourself," Jenkins urged. The final stretch of road was completely flat—a straight shot of cambered pavement to the gate. Even without magnification the sedan was impossible to miss.
"Look sharp!" Stisen bellowed to his squad, sitting in two sun-baked clumps behind sandbag berms on either side of the gate. "Dass, give me some cover!"
Jenkins heard movement on the first-story roof, directly below his position. "On your feet, boys!" Dass bellowed. 1/A's squad leader was a little overweight, but he was also very tall. As a result, the middle-aged maglev engineer didn't look fat so much as thick. "Lock and load!"
"My rifle!" Osmo whined. "It won't charge!" Whenever Osmo got stressed, his voice shifted to a childlike register. Usually this made Jenkins laugh, but not now.
"Pull your magazine then reset it," Dass said. "Make sure it goes all the way in."
Jenkins heard the scrape of metal on metal, then the successful clack of a rifle bolt.
"Sorry, Dass."
"It's alright. But you gotta calm down. Focus." By his patient but forceful tone, it was easy to tell Dass was a father—one boy, two girls.
"Just make sure you watch what they shoot," Stisen growled. The constable had a prickly personality that had only gotten worse since his defeat during the pugil competition. As much as Jenkins wished he could mute Stisen from the COM channel all the recruits shared, he knew Stisen had a point: 1/A would have to shoot past 2/A in order to hit the sedan.
Dass answered in a friendly tone. "Do your job, Stisen, and you won't have anything to worry about."
Rising to the challenge, Stisen marched to the center of the gate. Holding his MA5 to his right shoulder, he held out his left hand in a sign to stop. The sedan slowed and came to a halt twenty meters in front of Stisen. For a few seconds, all the recruits simply stared at the heat distortion roiling from the vehicle's roof.