I watched a great many bad war movies before I wrote this.
They rarely get the details right.
***
It wasn’t like Hollywood…
"Incoming fire," the comnet buzzed. Sergeant Tony Jones cursed as
the threat display began lighting up with warning icons. "Keep your
fucking heads down!"
In Hollywood, there was only one way it went.
The men of the 1st Armoured Battlesuit Regiment – so
named because Hollywood couldn’t be bothered learning the names of
the other units – would march up the hill in the full view of the
enemy forces. The Iron Men – as they called themselves when
copyright lawyers weren’t anywhere to be seen – would advance on the
enemy, wisecracking as the enemy poured fire on them from a
distance. From time to time, the stereotypes would suffer
embarrassments, from the tough-guy soldier who had never heard a
shot fired in anger in his life and was shitting himself at the
first thought of combat, to the scrawny wimpy guy who was rightfully
disliked and hated by the other members of the squad, and was
probably plotting to stick a knife in them at the first opportunity.
Led by the warm and friendly, yet tough, Sergeant, who would
encourage the soldiers with one voice and kick them up the slope
with the other, the Iron Men would advance to the top and march
right into the enemy encampment. To the strains of the latest battle
theme tune, the battlesuits would become covered in sparks as all
manner of weapons, from the primitive AK-47 to more modern antitank
weapons, or even a primitive plasma cannon, none of which had the
slightest hope of breaking through the battlesuit armour. The bad
guys would run, charging at the battlesuits like demons, shouting
their battle cries, from ‘Allah Ackbar’ to ‘Save the Earth,’ while
the battlesuits would just stand there and take it…
Until the commander – who was always strong, mighty, and with a
strong chin and firm jaw – gave the order. With a Heroic Phase on
their lips – ‘Hasta la Vista Baby’ was still popular – the 1st
Armoured Battlesuit Regiment would open fire. Within microseconds,
every last Wrecker would be dead…and Grateful American Chicks would
come out of hiding to join the soldiers in a happy dance before
partnering up and leading the soldiers to tents for some rest and
relaxation.
Hollywood loved its war movies.
The reality was just a little bit different.
In fact, it was quite a lot different.
The air above the four battlesuits lit up as lasers and Metalstorm
weapons, mounted on the vehicles that had followed them at a safe
distance, opened fire on the incoming shells. The Wreckers –
whichever group they actually were – had gotten themselves some
long-range guns and were using them, trying to hammer down the
battlesuits before they could break in and engage their positions
directly. Hollywood might have claimed that a shell couldn’t
penetrate a battlesuit, but Tony knew that that was bullshit; a
shell that struck a suit would blow it – and its occupant – to hell.
"Zack, give the flyboys something to use as a target," he snapped,
trying to direct the battle as best as he could. It never failed;
ten minutes into what had been a carefully-planned attack,
everything was going to hell. The Wrecker base clearly not only had
defences, but competent defenders; most of the Wreckers inclined to
the Inshallah method of shooting had been killed off during
the first ten years of the war. "Tell them…"
A streak of blinding light flared down from the jungle. It wasn’t
the sort of terrain that he would have preferred to use a battlesuit,
but from what he’d heard, the local authorities were shaky; they
wanted the Americans to not only intervene, but to send their best.
If it had been up to Tony, the entire base would have been struck
from orbit, but no, that would have been too easy. The brass had
wanted a demonstration of American power; at the moment, the
Wreckers looked as if they were about to give a lesson in how to
kick American arse.
"Plasma burst," someone snapped. It took Tony a long moment to
recognise the voice through the disruption caused by the superhot
plasma. "The bastards have plasma weapons!"
"Pray and the damn thing might explode," Tony snapped. They were
pinned down; unable to get at the enemy, safe from actually being
killed…unless the shells managed to lock onto the battlesuits and
guide themselves down onto their targets. The presence of the plasma
weapon was alarming; it suggested a high degree of competence on the
part of the Wrecker group. "Zack, where the fuck is my shellfire?"
A second streak of plasma burned through the trees. This time, it
struck a pool of water and sent it up in a gout of steam. Plasma
weapons were rarely used outside the military with good reason; they
were unreliable and tended to explode if used too violently. If the
Wreckers had assembled one out of duel-use technology, they would
have run a serious risk…and if they overused it…
"Pour on the fire," he snapped, designating targets. The battlesuits
opened fire, launching a hail of bullets through the trees, up
towards the location of the plasma weapon. There was an instants
pause…and then bolt after bolt of blinding white plasma, enough to
blind him without the visor, flared down towards their position. The
jungle seemed to howl as the bursts tore through the trees and
bushes; it had never been quite the same since the first round of
the Wrecker War had burned though the region. "Make them waste their
fire…"
An explosion, dead ahead of them; a wave of heat that set the ground
afire. He was running before he even realised what had happened,
powerful servomotors pushing the battlesuit forward as bullets
spangled off the armour, directly towards the enemy position. The
wave of burning plasma had set the entire enemy position on fire;
the battlesuits ran through it as if it wasn’t there, moving too
quickly to be slowed by the flames. Enemy soldiers, some of them
burning alive, looked up at them, unable to resist or even beg for
help.
He killed the seriously-wounded ones. It was a mercy.
"Control, this is Unit Four," he barked. "We have secured the enemy
position!"
There was no reply. The howl of jamming, instead, greeted his ears.
It suggested even more alarming things about what the Wreckers might
have in their base, the ruined city with an unpronounceable name.
The briefing had claimed that the local tourist board had claimed
that it was an Aztec city in Peru – Tony knew enough history to know
that there was something wrong with that statement – but in fact it
had been build twenty-seven years ago, before the Crash, to serve as
a tourist attraction. Abandoned, the Wreckers had moved in…
The radio buzzed as the battlesuits found an unjammed frequency.
"Unit Four, could you say again, over?"
"We have knocked out the enemy position," Tony said. "Where the fuck
is our support?"
"They shot down the drones, Unit Four," Captain Dominus Novus
snapped. Tony swallowed a curse; the enemy had somehow shot down the
drones that had been intended to direct long-range artillery fire
onto the Wreckers, or even guide in a precision strike from orbit.
"Higher Authority refused to send in a bomber or even a unmanned
bombing machine; any identification on the bodies?"
Tony looked down at the charred bodies. They were all unrecognisable.
"Negative," he said. The Intelligence pukes, once again, hadn’t been
sure which particular nest of Wreckers they were clearing out; they
might have been Greenpeace Commandos, Independence Activists,
Druglords, Doomsayers or even one of the hundreds of versions of Al
Quida. There were literally thousands of Wrecker cells scattered
around the globe, some of them in very strange places; the Internet
might have been great for the pornographic industry, but it was also
great for the terrorist groups that had become the Wreckers. Ever
since the Middle East had melted down and…
"We’re bringing up heavy guns," Novus informed him. Tony bit back a
second curse; they’d been intended to have heavy guns right from the
beginning, except for the fact that local roads were terrible and
the locals more than willing to help the Wreckers, in exchange for
the money that the Wreckers could offer…or escape from the terror.
It might even have been political; it wasn’t as if the local
government was a paragon of democracy and respect for human rights.
Entire sections of the jungle had been ripped away for money; it
suggested, more than anything else, the presence of Greenpeace
Commandos. They had an ideological reason to be present…
He threw himself down – the suit took the impact – as a hail of
bullets flashed up at them. Warning messages – a fraction too late,
as always – blinked up in front of him; the enemy were attempting to
evict them from their new conquest. It made a certain kind of sense,
after all; the Wreckers had thousands of people who had served in
one of the armies scattered across the world, from the stereotypical
dark-skinned soldiers from the remains of Pakistan or Bangladesh, to
some of the darker secrets of the western world. They had nothing
left, but destruction.
The others were already firing at the enemy position. One thing was
certain; the Wreckers weren’t new at the game. They weren’t charging
up the hill, AK-47s blazing; they were taking their time and
solidifying their position before preparing to advance. They had far
more manpower than the four men in the battlesuits, and if they
could crack a battlesuit, the fighting was as good as over. He
peered down with his sensors, looking for the telltale sign of a
second plasma weapon, but found nothing. That meant…
The Wreckers launched a hail of RPGs into their position. Hollywood,
once again, would have it that the suits could shrug off the impact.
Once again, Hollywood was dead wrong; the suits could take some of
the impact, but not all of it…and the shock alone could hurt the
occupant. Admittedly, it would take a direct hit and a lot of luck
to seriously injure the suit – one reason the Wreckers had risked
the plasma weapon – but if enough grenades were fired, the odds of
chance alone would offer them a victory.
"Return fire," he snapped, ordering the suit to unleash its inbuilt
grenade launcher. The other suits joined the attack, providing
suppressing fire as the Wreckers, flushed from cover, attempted to
take advantage of the American exposure. Explosions shook the
ground, but the Wreckers didn’t flinch; the crump-crump-crump
of mortar rounds falling within the position held by the Americans
shocked Tony out of his near-complacency. What the fuck else did the
Wreckers have inside their camp? "Where the fuck is our support?"
"The guns are ready," Novus informed him. Tony didn’t quite manage
to bite down the sharp retort that rose to his lips, namely a demand
to know why a unit that was under attack hadn’t been given all the
support it needed, at once, not ten minutes after they were all
dead. "Where do you want them to engage?"
Tony designated a set of targets. Had everything gone to plan, the
armoured units would have brushed aside or killed all of their
opposition by now; instead, five of the unit had been killed and
four more were pinned down by enemy weapons. The very air seemed to
pause as the first wave of American shells were launched into the
air…and then they came crashing down, bare meters from the American
positions. Tony held himself together, using the suit to keep
himself as insulated from the effects of the bombardment as
possible; he watched as the fires of hell itself came for the
Wreckers.
He’d wondered if the Wreckers had anything that could have served as
counterbattery units; after all, they seemed to have everything
else. They didn’t; no lasers or Metalstorm weapons rose to swat away
the imprudent shells as they mashed they defenders to paste. Tony
knew better than to assume that they had all been killed, of course;
the Americans had learned a great deal – relearned, would be more
accurate – about how many men could survive the attack, if they were
lucky. None of the shells would fall within the ‘city’ either; the
brass was determined to take the city intact and hopefully a few
Wreckers who might know useful details like the names of the people
who were supplying them with money and weapons.
"Hang fire for a moment," he ordered. "I want to know if they’re
still alive…"
Silence fell, very loudly. The enemy position had been badly
mangled; at least one shell had fallen within the city itself,
setting something on fire. The battlesuits advanced carefully,
watching for trouble or surviving enemy soldiers, finding nothing. A
handful of things, barely recognisable as bodies, could be seen; the
shells had torn them up pretty badly. Something moved…
"Shit," one of his men breathed. A burst of plasma had struck Zack
right in the chest; no armour could hope to shield its wearer from
such a weapon. It had been the final impetus behind the
decommissioning of most of the old Abrams tanks, even the newer
Franks tanks; their armour was no longer capable of standing up to a
modern battlefield. Tony didn’t look; he knew what he would have
seen, the armour curving away from the battlesuit with burning meat
inside. "Sir…?"
"Covering fire, now," Tony barked. The battlesuits opened fire,
aiming directly towards the ‘window’ in the ‘Aztec City’ where the
plasma bolt had come from, trying to kill the murderer who had
murdered one of their friends. The city itself looked like
everyone’s conception of an Aztec City, with temples and weird
carvings; it said something about the local government of the time
that they had spent their money on this, instead of programs that
might have helped the tens of thousands caught up in the
humanitarian crises that had fed the Wrecker movement. "Take that
fucker out!"
The building disintegrated under the hail of fire. Explosions tore
at shoddy building materials, shattering the supports that had held
it together, finally sending it crashing to the ground and impacting
with enough force to shake the ground. The other American units, he
saw now, were advancing, closing in on the city and trapping the
Wreckers within their base. A handful of expendable drones flashed
overhead, daring the enemy to fire at them; shellfire took out the
guns that dared shoot down a drone.
"Remain focused," Novus warned. "The satellites are still reporting
movement within the enemy city."
Rear-echelon motherfucker,
Tony thought. It wasn’t entirely fair; the endless war had gone on
long enough to ensure that each and everyone who held a commission
in the United States Army – let alone the USAF or USN – had had
plenty of combat experience and the incompetents had been weeded out
with the usual brutality of war. At the same time, the advances in
communications technology – although not perfect, as the jamming
attempt had proven – had made it much easier for high-ranking
officers to both supervise and control their men, sometimes to the
detriment of the subordinates who occasionally found themselves
charged with impossible missions.
There was no escape. Procedure was quite clear; the Wreckers had to
be offered one chance to surrender, whereupon they would be taken to
one of the Gitmo bases, interrogated, tried, and either executed or
jailed. They had been caught in a war zone, firing on American
forces; no lawyer would be willing to try and argue their case in
court. It hadn’t been that long since a lawyer had been tarred and
feathered after the bombing of Seattle. If they didn’t surrender…
"ATTENTION," someone bellowed, though their suit’s megaphone. Tony
felt his ears sting under the massive volume of the voice.
"ATTENTION; YOU ARE SURROUNDED AND COMPLETELY OUTGUNNED. UNDER THE
UN WRECKER CONTROL RESOLUTION OF 2015, YOU ARE CALLED UPON TO
SURRENDER OR DIE. THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER WARNING."
They waited. Procedure was clear; any prisoners were to be searched,
cuffed, and sent back to the base camp. Tony would have been
surprised if any of the Wreckers had surrendered; it wasn’t as if
any of them would have had much to look forward to, as prisoners.
Attitudes had hardened on all sides in the fighting; whoever they
actually were, they would know that they could expect no mercy. The
days when people had protested at detaining possible terror suspects
had died with Seattle. No, the Wreckers would stand, fight, and die.
"Prepare for kill-sweep procedure," Novus said, as calmly as
possible. Tony sensed his disappointment; Wrecker surrendered
prisoners were rare. There was also concern; the American
battlesuits would have to go into action in terrain that wasn’t
suited to their capabilities, but far too dangerous…particularly if
there were other plasma weapons around. "Covering fire programs
locked…and engaging!"
Tony smiled thinly as the first wave of shells screamed into the
city. There would be no more talk, not now; the gas from the shells
would already be spreading rapidly through the city. The gas caused
unconsciousness in most of the people who breathed it in, but some
small percentage of the population were allergic to the gas and
would die breathing it in. The battlesuits advanced carefully…and
ran into a hail of fire. Tony almost smiled; the Wreckers had
anticipated the gas attack and had deployed gas masks of their own,
or had they? He stared as a Wrecker fell to the ground in front of
him; there was no sign of a mask.
He stared. "What the fuck?"
The fight raged across the entire city…but the outcome was certain…
"No prisoners," Novus said, afterwards. The debriefing was being
conducted in the remains of one of the Wrecker buildings, the only
one that was half-intact after the battlesuits had minced their way
through the city. A handful of Wreckers had tried to escape by
running down the sewage pipe…and had run into the Americans
stationed at one end of the sewer. They had all been killed when one
of their grenades had detonated. "They really didn’t want us to know
what was going on here."
Tony glared at him. "One of them breathed in the gas and didn’t
fall," he said. "None of them did; what the fuck were they doing
here?"
"Classified, I think," Novus said softly. Tony wondered, just for a
moment, just where Novus had served as a front-line military
officer. "Suffice it to say that it was something dangerous."
Tony drew his own conclusions. The Wreckers had been working on an
antidote – no, a vaccine – for the knock-out gas. The endless war
might have become much more endless. He looked up as the dead or
dying American soldiers were carried out of the city, more bodies
for the graves, back in their hometowns. Nearly a billion people had
died in the war…
It wasn’t anything like Hollywood.