War Game

Note: Bob Cornett and I wrote the novel, Seeds of War about a campaign against a perceived enemy race on Tau Ceti Four. Although this story is not in the book as it is written here (there is a variation), it is in that same universe. The style is a little different but the characters are the ones that would be found in the book. I thought it interesting enough to post it here. 

Image for a moment that you are a combat infantry soldier in the twenty-second century. Then go further and imagine that the entire solar system in a war with the inhabitants of a planet a dozen light years from Earth. Next, imagine that you are deep in enemy territory, and that your squad has been cut off from the rest of your unit and surrounded. Finally, imagine that you’re only fifteen years old. Ready? Begin.

TAU CETI FOUR – INVASION PLUS ONE read the scenario board at yesterday evening’s briefing. But that was yesterday. It is now five o’clock in the morning in an endless corridor somewhere beneath the planet’s surface. When the platoon made its infiltration jump at 0300 there was a thin, blue, cloudless sky above, and a desert encircled enemy citadel below. Now there is only hard rock underfoot, and nobody knows what’s above.

There are enemy troops up corridor and down corridor. Nobody knows for sure how close they might or might not be. Nobody knows for certain how many there are. Nobody knows for certain what they look like. The only thing that is certain is that if we don’t bug out of here in one hell of a hurry, we are going to get our collective ass stomped.

And the only way out is down an intersecting corridor a hundred yards ahead where an auxiliary tunnel joins the main at a right angle.

There are thirteen of us counting our Tactical Advisor, Sergeant Marquette, Lucky Thirteen Linda Zalaznik calls us. Soldiers, SCAF, Combat, PAI, Pathfinder, Shade Tactical Tan, Manually Operated, Hand Fed, Air Cooled.

Air Cooled. Not the way I’m sweating. So much for shorts and knee socks.

I try telling myself it’s only the textured Impervium body armor and that ambient air temp is, after all, 96 degrees. No go. It isn’t the body armor, nor the heat.

It is fear.

I am fifteen years old and a very young adult young lady for my age. I remind myself, but I have never been in combat before, and I am afraid.

I tilt up the polarized visor on my battle helmet and steal a look at the rest of the squad. Everyone is sweating except Marquette. He alone has been in combat before. He alone has seen death and caused it. South Africa in forty-three, Panama in forty-seven, Canada in forty-nine. The blood of many on his hands.

“I’ve killed more people than all of you together have friends,” he told the squad once, and we believed him.

I wonder how many I will kill before the killing is finally over.

Susan Norton is our squad leader. She nods at Zalaznik, who is point, and Linda levels her assault rifle and steps around the corner of the intersecting corridor.

There is a loud buzzing noise and she staggers backwards out of the tunnel and collapses. Lucky Linda’s luck has expired.

“Shit!” cracks Norton’s voice in my ear buds.

Her finger stabs briefly at Patterson, von Ehrlick, and Martinez. The finger of death. They nod grimly and without a word go around the corner low and fast rifles firing.

There are three more loud buzzes, then silence.

“Goddamn it,” says Norton, losing her cool. She tossed a grenade around the corner, waits for the flash, and then pokes her head around to check the damage.

She screams.

Steve McAllif grabs her ankle and pulls her back out of the tunnel mouth. Norton has both hands over her eyes. Her forgotten rifle lies where it has fallen.

Marquette pushed McAllif aside and kneels by Norton’s head.

“I can’t see. I can’t see!” cries Norton.

“Of course, you can’t,” says Marquette, pulling her hands away from her face. “I’ve told you at least a dozen times, Norton. Keep you fucking visor down in combat.”

There is no emotion in his voice.

Marquette checks Norton’s eyes, pulls a plastic bottle out of his web pouch, and puts two drops in each eye. Then he takes off her helmet and bandages her eyes with sterile pads and gauze.

“It’s still up to you people,” he says without looking over his shoulder.

Bastard.

Command falls to McAllif.

“What do you think, Lara?” he asks me.

I wonder briefly whether he asks because he values my military opinion or because we have friends and have been lovers. Then I remember. Steven is Command II. Daniel Flying By O’Rourke and I are Maneuver 5 and 6 respectively. Steve is asking what I think because I’m going to be the next one around the corner. Maneuver 1, 2, and 3 have already had their mistakes.

“I think, since they can see us the instance we step into the tunnel mouth, we’d better fix it so they can’t see us,” I tell him.

“What do you suggest we do, turn out the lights?” cracks Marchetti.

“No,” says O’Rourke. “We wily pathfinders wait until dark and then attack. Kill ‘em all,” he offers helpfully.

I glance at the perverted Mick Cherokee and then glare at McAllif. I hope the stare is sufficiently icy and say, “Turn out the lights is what I suggest. Two violet smokes ought to do it.”

Steve nods. “Right. Smoke.”

“And masks.”

“Masks?”

“It’s a tunnel. It’s going to be full of smoke. We might want to be able to breath.”

Steve reddens slightly and I can see his dark eyebrows pull down beneath his visor.

“You’re cute when you blush, McAllif,” I tell him, buying time before I have to enter the tunnel.

He gets even redder as he yanks off his helmet and pulls out his gas mask.

“Mask up,” he rasps, slapping it out his face to cover the flush.

When everyone is ready he nods at O’Rourke and me.

I unclip a small grenade, snap off the safety tab, and flip the trigger bar. As it starts to billow blue-black, I edge over to the tunnel mouth and toss it around the corner. Danny waits fifteen seconds for mine to work, then steps into the open, heaves his as far down the tunnel as he can, and ducks back fast. The enemy does not fire.

Ten seconds pass. Fifteen. McAllif, looking like a helmeted bush hog behind his mask, nods.

“Do it.”

O’Rourke and I go into the tunnel together, low and fast. I know at once we’ve made a mistake. I can’t see a thing.

The grenades had done their work. I bump into one wall, take a few steps, bounce off the other, and stumble over someone who grunts. I have no idea where O’Rourke is.

We find each other by the process of collision, and both go down.

He rolls away from me and I hear him stumbling to his feet. Suddenly there is a rapid series of low-pitched, ugly, ripping sounds and the air above me is knifed by laser fire.

The normally invisible beams cut ruby-red pencils through the diffusing smoke. Lethality in technicolor. I just have time to think, “I never dreamed that war could be so lovely,” when a low shot searing across my bare forearm brings me painfully back to business.

The enemy is firing blind, and with death flashing inches over my head, I decide the tunnel floor is the safest place to be.

But not for long. The smoke is beginning to dissipate, and I realize it’s now or never. I begin crawling rapidly along the tunnel wall, toward the enemy.

As the smoke thins and I get nearer to the source of the laser fire, I can make out three indistinct shapes huddled behind what looks like a sandbagged revetment. I pull a flash grenade from its retaining clip on my shoulder harness, tear off the safety tab and foil, and rolling to my back, punch the actuator. The throw is perfect and I flop over and bury my face in my arms.

I can almost feel the heat wash over me as the light finds a path through my polarizer and tries to force its way up under my eyelids, but there is no noise. I decide that I am still alive.

Crawling forward I shove my rifle barrel over the top of the sandbags and have a look. I am instantly sorry.

Yesterday’s mistakes, three bodies, lie torn and shredded amid young blood in the bottom of the sandbagged pit. I have to fight hard to keep my breakfast from coming up in my mask. No strap on training aids this time. These are real people.

I check the bodies while O’Rourke covers me, he’s even more stoic than usual. It is SOP. We pulled the power packs from their lasers, scatter the firing servos, and see to our casualties. Then McAllif forms the reminder of the squad and we strike off across the sand toward the rally point, having somehow found our way outside.

The RP lies just beyond the third dune. Pickett, a sandy haired kid with a peach fuzz mustache is the commander. His exec is Heineken. Heineken has a build like a gorilla. His body is covered with curly black hair that matches his curly black head.

“Intel says we can expect a major push by the enemy within the hour,” Pickett tells us. “Probably a company supported by armor. We’ve got to hold a pass between some hills until help arrives.”

Steve looks at him incredulously. “Hold with what?”

“Just us and the anti-tank squad.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Our orders are ‘Hold until relieved.’”

“Our orders smell.”

“Those are the orders, McAllif. Now take your squad over to that hill and dig in on the far slope. And don’t give me any more crap.”

We spread out along the hillside and I break out my entrenching tool and start chopping away at a likely spot. The enemy arrives before I’m half finished. Of course. I knew they would. I snuggled down as deeply as I can and wait. Got to lure the enemy in close. Got to sucker him in so the anti-tank squad can make the kill first time at bat. They might not get a second chance.

At first there is only dust on the horizon, special effects from a grade B video, then the enemy comes into view by the far dunes, three Light Armored Fighting Vehicles shaped in a vanguard V, followed by a platoon of infantry, the advance elements of the Tau counter-offensive.

The enemy is clever. She is dressed as a soldier of the Sol Combined Arms Force to confuse us, but we are not confounded. Her camouflage is imperfect. Her scarlet arm band gives her away.

The LAFV’s grind abruptly to a halt, the infantry scattering in the sand or cowering behind the heli-arc welded, stressed Impervium plate hulls of the tracked vehicles. Has the enemy detected our ambush, or is she merely being cautious? If we’ve been detected then we’re going to get a pasting. The main batteries of the LAFV’s have nine times the effective range of any weapon in our platoon and five times the destructive power.

The enemy is being cautious. The big guns flash in unison and I burrow deeper into the foxhole and try to pull the non-existent top in after me. Even though I have never been shelled before, I know what to expect. There is a low whooshing sound as the fin stabilized projectiles come gliding in and then three shaking, nerve tingling concussions. Recon by fire.

Three more times the muzzles flash. Three more times there comes the whooshing and then the crashing roar. It seems to me that the concussions do not all come from where the projectiles should have landed, but I am too busy digging a hole in the rocky sand with my face to be sure.

The firing stops and I risk a look. The enemy troops are conferring among themselves. They seem to be arguing about something.

At last the vehicle in the apex of the V edges forward, accompanied by two squads of infantry. It stops a hundred yards from the foot of the hill and transverses its turret from left to right, raking the slope with its Gatling laser, slicing great smoldering trenches with its nuclear-powered fire, churning up clouds of sand and debris. Not being stupid, we do not return fire.

There is another pause, presumably while the vehicle crews discuss the situation by shielded COMM link, and then the reminder of the force closes up with the point of the LAFV.

Steady, steady, they’re almost at the foot of the slope. Wait for it. Now!

There is a wildly bobbing, corkscrewing streak of argon light as the anti-tank missile plows nose first into the turret of the first vehicle, momentarily shrouding it in a snowstorm of white hot plastic. The LAFV continues on for a few yards and then screeches to a halt, the tracks locked up tight, and begins to exude a dense orange smoke. The hatches remain closed, the crew inside.

The remaining armor and infantry open fire simultaneously and I hear Pickett’s voice in my ear buds.

“Start the battle. Start the battle. Anti-tank squad fire for effect on the number two tank. Infantry target independently.”

I poke the barrel of my rifle over the lip of my foxhole, center the crosshairs on the nearest enemy soldier, and press the firing stud. I watch in macabre fascination as her chest turns crimson and she topples slowly to the ground.

Breaking the trace, I swing the rifle ten degrees left and burn out another soldier, then back to the right and a third shot. My aim is not so good this time. The soldier drops her rifle and stands shaking her left hand as though stung by a bee. Suddenly remembering she is being shot at, drops to the ground, hand to her mouth, but she is not fast enough. Another kill.

I am swinging on the fourth mark when something catches my eye. The anti-tank squad has fallen off par also. Number two LAFV is damaged, but still under power. Both it and number three have reversed and are backing away. Behind them a soldier slips and falls into the path of number two. Frozen in time, I watch with clinical detachment as she struggles to her feet, slips again, hesitates for the fatal instant and then scrambles frantically, all sense of reason forgotten in the face of real death.

She screams as the treads roll over her, the sound of tires on concrete.

A second later the body is pushed from underneath the neoprene track pads, a mas of twisted, mangled flesh and broken, crushed bones, the blood staining the sand and the polyfoam.

For a moment, the LAFV continues backing away, the crew unaware they had run over someone. All up and down the line soldiers stop firing, sporadic shots trailing away into nothingness as the storm of battle dies. We are in the eye of the hurricane. Soldiers gather around the remains and I stand slowly, fully exposed to any enemy sniper. It does not matter. The film plate on my chest shows bright red and the power has been cut from my laser. Sometime in the last few seconds of the fight, I have been killed. I didn’t even hear the scoring buzzer.

A noncom with a black and white armband reading UMPIRE runs from the air-conditioned command tent, yelling at us to keep firing.

“Shoot, damn it. Shoot!” he screams. “The battle isn’t over yet.”

No one pays any attention to him. Overhead a yellow flare breaks near the heat lamps, signaling the end of the exercise.

Training Platoon Sergeant Fetterman stalks from the command tent, motioning us to follow him. We form a ragged line near the body, trying not to look at it, while we wait for the sergeant to call everyone in with his radio. When we are all assembled, he calls us to attention and waits while we straighten out the line.

“What in the held happened to you people?” he bellows. “Do you think you can stop and stand up in the middle of a battle just because one of your friends is stupid enough to get herself run over by a friendly tank. This isn’t some game were playing here.”

“Yes. It is just a game,” snaps the guy in the line next to me.

Fetterman walks quietly over and stands with his face inches from the other’s nose.

“What’s your name, trainee,” says Fetterman without raising his voice. It is a rhetorical question. He has already read the nametag above the trainee’s left ammo pocket on his chest protector.

The guy hesitates a second before speaking. His voice too, is quiet. Unlike Fetterman’s, it is not calm.

“Sergeant!” he whispers. “The trainees name is Leupin, Jacques. I’m sorry I sounded off Sergeant. Trainee Mead was a friend of mine and to have seen her just run over like…”

Fetterman’s voice is cold and dangerous. “I don’t give a shit whose friend the deceased was, how she died, or even what her name was, except as it concerns graves registration. The only thing important to me is that she died. She died because she got stupid, panicked, and made a mistake. Just like the three trainees who were killed during the para-drop practice yesterday. None of them had to die. They killed themselves because they got careless and made fatal mistakes.”

“Mead didn’t make any mistake. She got run over by a tank. That wasn’t her fault. It was…”

For a moment, I think Fetterman is going to strike Leupin, but it isn’t necessary. His withering stare is enough to cut off further discussion.”

“This!” he says, “is a mistake. Trainee Mead did not have to die. She killed herself because she panicked and made a mistake. Having fallen twice on the slippery surface, she tried to get up a third time instead of simply rolling out of the way. Had she rolled to the left, the LAFV would have missed her completely. Had he rolled to the right, there would have been sufficient clearance for the vehicle to pass over her without inflicting injury. Trainee Mead died because she made a mistake. That killed her as surely as if she had put a pistol to her own head.

“If you learn no other lesson today, if you remember nothing else, learn and remember this: The only way to get killed in combat is to make a mistake.

“Contrary to Trainee Leupin’s opinion, we are not playing games here. This was a simulated combat situation.”

He waved a hand in the general direction of the red army infantry. “The defending blue troops won this engagement because you jerks fell apart and quit. Had this been actual combat, you would have been wiped out, tanks and all. Had this been actual combat, the blue troops would have successfully defended the pass against a superiorly equipped force, halting your counter-offensive at a critical stage, and very probably costing you the war.

“You have been told time and again that mistakes will kill. You’ve just had a very practical demonstration. If yesterday’s deaths didn’t get through to you, maybe this one will.

“Now a word about the tunnel assault. Alpha squad, your first mistake was getting people simulated killed. Your second mistake was trying to come down the corridor without smoke. Your third mistake was trying to come down the corridor a second time without smoke. Your fourth mistake was coming down the corridor standing up. Your fifth mistake was coming down the corridor at all, instead of using your grenade launcher from the other end. Your sixth mistake was firing your rifles in the smoke and giving you positions away, except for Masterson who exhibited the tiniest inkling of common sense by using a grenade simulator instead of her rifle. Your seventh mistake was getting people killed.

“With the exception of Masterson, all of Alpha squad has earned themselves an hour of extra duty. No. It was an exceptional performance, we’ll make it two. Sergeant Marquette!”

“Yes, Platoon Sergeant.”

“See to it that the punishment is carried out before the Trainees are released for evening meal.”

“Yes, Platoon Sergeant.

“Now,” says Fetterman, “I’m going to say this just once. We are not playing games here. This is not a game. It is a training exercise. The purpose of a training exercise is to teach you how to stay alive in a combat environment. You’re not going to be fighting mock battles with laser training aids and flash grenades in some damned simulator ship for the rest of you lives. In a short time, far too short a time, you are going to find yourselves ejected out of a shuttle over Tau Ceti Four. When that time comes, the rifles are going to be real, and the grenades real, and the artillery real, and the death real. And real people will be dying for real.

“Unless you wake up and pay attention to what we are trying to teach you here and now, large numbers of you are going to be dead.”

Fetterman looks at Leupin, shrugs and sighs.

“All right Trainee, I can see I’m not getting through to you. You still think war is a game. Okay, have it your way, but remember this. There is only one rule by which the game is played. Stay alive. No one ever won a war by dying for his cause. He won it by making the enemy die for his. The acid test of warfare is survival. Mead did not survive. She could have, but she made a mistake. In war, death is not a passing grade.”

Fetterman is quiet for a moment, considering what to do with Mead’s remains.

“Shall I detail someone to clean up the mess?” Marquette askes him.

“No,” says Fetterman at last. “Leave the mistake where it is. Maybe it will give others something to think about.”

He turns to address the entire assemble.

“All right,” he says. “It’s obvious from the performance you’ve just given that we still have a lot of work to do. We’ll run the exercise again, from the top. Tankers take your vehicles back to the original starting position at the far end of the ship. Everyone else form up according.

“And this time do it right. One terminal mistake is enough for today.”

I stand for a moment before moving, staring down at the broken mass I knew only as Mead, Sarah J. Only her nametag is still recognizable. I wish I could have known her better.

“Leave the mistake where it is,” Fetterman had said.

Sometimes I wonder who in the hell the enemy really is.