WHB6 Chpt 4-6

The second update of chapters for the new War Horses Book, bringing us up to Chapter 6. Next week will be 7-9.

Chapter 4 – A Patrol Like Any Other

His voice came through strained and rough. “I’m alright! Significant damage to my upright.”

I turned Ardennes south. “Moving to assist!”

“Negative! Move in, find that fucker with the bombs and take him out!”

I grit my teeth, hesitating while rounds continued to drum against my chassis. I saw another plume of rocket fuel rise from the compound and made up my mind, pushing through the gate. I met immediate resistance in the form of two trad-pattern tanks in revetments and a handful of light armored vehicles. The heavy smoothbores on top of the tanks thundered, and the near simultaneous impacts on my shrouds pushed me back a step. Warnings blared from my damage readout. The force of the shells had blown out one of my hydraulic systems, so I couldn’t easily shrug off a second salvo. But I also couldn’t stay in the gate. I’d be a sitting duck.

A quick snapshot with my QLoks sent a gout of earth and crete skyward, but the tanks had perfect cover and even the heavy sabots failed to penetrate. I pushed in under man-pad rocket and small arms fire, shrouds toward the tanks until I could duck into cover behind one of the larger structures. I arced a pair of smoke cans, as well. But with the wind howling, they wouldn’t do much good.

“Rowdy, watch that gate, two heavy smooth-bores have it fixed.”

“Roger that! Got an alternate ingress. Standby.”

I tracked my sensor ball right just in time to see Rowdy come over the wall and on top of the larger structure further to the north of my position. Now, don’t get me wrong, counter-gravs can do some amazing work for a Peregrine-class. But they don’t let them vault double their own height.

“Root system gave me a ramp up,” he reported, as if anticipating my question. “Eyes on the tanks, stand by indirect.”

I switched over my plasma coils to Rowdy’s polarization frequency and dialed back the range. As soon as the lock came through, I fired. The plasma shells spun skyward, before whipping back down over the top of the crete structure. One or two clipped the edge in a cloud of crete dust, but the rest slammed home in a one-two punch.

“Good kill,” reported Rowdy. Then, “Holy shit, they’ve got uprights!”

He shared his video feed, and I brought it up to see the source of the thermobarics: A middleweight upright with mirrored launcher pods on top of the turret, and a smaller welterweight beside it angled toward the gate we’d breached. It had already burned through more than half of its loadout, but it still had a half-dozen of the deadly bombs left. As I watched, one of those pods tilted up and fired another rocket skyward, to the north this time.

“Jacque, incoming!” I shouted over the main circuit.

“Incoming!” he called back. Probably had his loudspeaker on to give warning to the rear Bash-Sec element. I grit my teeth and pushed out from behind cover to move into the compound proper.

“Where were they hiding this thing?” demanded Rowdy. “Orbital shoulda picked it up!”

I looked around. “Had to be the mine. Only place big enough for an upright.”

But why did they even have them? I sprinted up the main thoroughfare, past a column of evacuating vehicles pushing toward the rear gate to the north, and then cut across it, crushing a troop carrier and a technical’s front-end in the process. The act caused a minor pileup, but that was someone else’s problem. The pair of uprights came into view, and that was mine.

Rowdy and I were outweighed by tonnage, but a lot of Gyalt’s weight was wrapped up in the artillery upright’s rocket pods. And, as much as I hate to admit it, Rowdy is a stronger jockey than I am, who punches above his weight class. I opened up with a spread of seekers, but the welterweight was ready with his point defense and took most of them out of the air on climb-out. He immediately stepped between me and the artillery upright lobbing vacuum bombs. It had double-thick shrouds at the front, and my first pair of railgun shots shrugged off them like it didn’t even notice. He returned fire with a spray of direct-fire rockets and a pair of top-mounted beam weapons. Armor sloughed off my chassis as I spread my shrouds to allow my point defense clearance to intercept the rockets.

“Rowdy,” I said, “those shrouds aren’t articulated, flank right and hammer him from the side.”

“On it! What about the big guy?”

“He can’t fire that ordnance inside the base without killing half of his own retreating troops. The welter is the threat.”

A spread of smaller rockets hammered into the welter from the side. Peregrines aren’t known for their staying power, but they can dish out a few haymakers before they go dry. The welterweight stumbled to the side, exposing the rocket rocket upright. I split my aim, one QLok toward the welter, and the other toward the heavier MBU, and fired both guns along with a handful of plasma shells.

Already off-balance, one sabot slipped between the shrouds of the welter and punched into its chassis low, below the turret but above the hip flexors. It twisted and jerked, and Rowdy began to ripple-fire the rest of his rockets into its flank, scoring hits along its counter-grav generator and reactor skirting.

The rocket tank took my other shot high on the chassis, right through the root of its port-side rocket rack—unfortunately, the one that had already expended most of its ordnance. It slumped to the side as it’s center of gravity shifted, but the jockey caught it and adjusted, bringing another pair of beam weapons to bear. The neon-yellow beams raked the front of Ardennes, carving off armor and blinding sensor modules. Dark spots began appearing in my field of vision where cameras burnt out under the intense radiation. Good. I wanted him to focus on me. I could lose armor and sensor modules. But the troops outside couldn’t take more vacuum bombs.

That said, having two jockeys fully focused on killing you isn’t ever a completely ideal situation. Luckily, I wasn’t alone, and the welterweight disregarded Rowdy in his recon to his own detriment. With the skirting on the welter’s left flank mangled, Rowdy’s light cannons struck home and blew the left counter-grav generator out in a shower of blue sparks.

The welter dropped to a knee-joint. Without articulated shrouds to stabilize itself, it didn’t have the balance of a more versatile MBU. I took a moment to line up my QLoks, but in doing so, I made a crucial error in judgement.

Even as I fired two rounds through the turret ring on the damaged welter, the rocket upright jockey went full scorched earth. It tilted its pods up and launched another thermobaric warhead. The rocket arced up and tilted west.

I squeezed the radio switch so hard I’m surprised the sticks didn’t crack in my hands.

“Rocco! Incoming! Get out of there, now!”

“Incoming!”

Chapter 5 – Wheelchair Promotion

They call it a ‘wheelchair promotion’. When a jockey is too broken to fight, but too valuable to lose.

I walked the familiar route through the corridors of Bashtu-Central Hospital, following the color codes to the convalescent wing.

Ironically, if Rocco had punched out, he probably would have died. The vacuum bomb would have swept his tub out of the sky and crumpled it against the flora. Marmaluk was the only thing that kept him alive, even as it took the full brunt of the thermobaric charge. It was a tough old war horse, but the number six armor panel on the left flank of the turret was forced back through the wall of the tub.

Rocco was sitting up already when I entered the sterile, white room. I looked around, then walked across the floor and opened the blinds. With all my stories that start with waking up in a hospital bed, I sometimes forget that I’m not the only one. It’s a bad habit I picked up from the guy who brought me into the Chevaliers. Only this wasn’t some drunken bar brawl, or a rough landing in an air car.

Rocco lifted his left arm to shield his eyes from the light. He had to use the crook of his elbow, because the arm ended just past the joint in an antiseptic patch. I couldn’t see it under the blanket, but I know the leg ended just above the knee.

“Fuck me, that’s bright,”

“Rocco, it’s night-time.”

The former formation commander of the Third Chevaliers grimaced. “It’s these drugs they got me on. Makes me real sensitive to light.”

I swung my pack off and dug out a pair of welding goggles, tipping them up by the strap with an eyebrow raised.

“Hard pass on the virginity protectors. See if they got sunglasses in the gift shop. Better yet, snag a chair and wheel me down there.”

I looked at the forest of fluid-filled tubes running into my oldest friend. He’s tough as nails, but I can tell when he’s putting on a front. In addition to the double amputation, he was being treated for burns, a concussion, a cracked hip, and he had a line of twelve staples on a shaved stripe along the left side of his head where he’d split it when Marmaluk toppled over. Anyone else would have been dead, but Dirty Rocco was every bit the monster as the MBU he jockeyed.

I looked him dead in the eyes. “Rocco, even if you were fit to get out of bed, which you’re not, you’d have to lose at least one more limb or your head to be light enough for me to push your fat ass around.”

His eyes widened. “You fucking little shit!” he giggled. It turned into a belly laugh, which turned into an uncomfortable cough, and then he spasmed, muscles bulging as they clenched up. He hissed through grit teeth. That triggered some sensor to beep, and I saw a shot of pale fluid rush down one of the tubes.

He untensed. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Everyone else is walking on eggshells in here. At least someone in the Chevaliers still has the balls to treat me like I’m still human.”

“Swift been to see you yet?” I asked.

“That’s who I was talking about, numb-nuts. Did you think I meant you, you little monster? You just gave me a fucking seizure.”

I grinned, then dropped it and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Rocco.”

“Don’t sweat it. Docs say it’s a side effect of prosthetic primers getting my brain ready to take the new arm. So I get a different drug for that. And that one makes me shi—"

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, cutting him off. “If I’d been quicker taking down that thermobaric MBU…”

Rocco struggled to push himself back to a sitting position from where he’d slid down. “What’d I just say about walking on eggshells, kid?” He tilted his head toward the data-pad on his side table. “I’ve seen the sensor data. Not like I had fuck-all else to do for the last three weeks. We got fucked with incomplete intel, yeah. Gyalt wasn’t supposed to be packing serious military hardware. That should have been a planetary garrison op, not Bash-Sec. But think what would have happened if you hadn’t taken the initiative on the east side. There would have been a half-dozen more thermos launched. Hell, think if we hadn’t been there at all. They didn’t smuggle those bombs on-world to sit in a mine. Someone requested them.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Who knows?” Rocco shrugged. Or, tried to, at least. The forest of tubes got in the way. There were so many it reminded me of the filament jungle on Cinto DaSelva. “Not like Bashers tell us anything until they need an upright. The point is, I saw you scrap two uprights with Rowdy, and you did it the right way—threat savvy and working together. You prioritize taking out the guns pointed at you first, always. You couldn’t have known big hoss was going to hate-launch one last warhead before he punched out.”

I looked to the side. “Yeah, well. It still sucks. Congratulations on your promotion.”

“You’re telling me. I’m going to be two-thirds tin by time I’m frocked, hey? But you’re looking at the new executive officer for the alpha companies.”

I offered a mock salute. Rocco was now Swift’s de-facto leader of not just the Third Chevaliers, but formations one through three. The position had been previously unofficially split by Rocco and Swift herself in addition to her duties as the regiment’s commander. Partly because it’s nigh impossible to pry the sticks out of a formation commander’s hands, so the position had been vacant for ages. The same thing had happened to Swift and Pug before Rocco. But he’d be coming into it amidst months—maybe years of rehabilitation. It was a bitter pill to swallow, and I could hear it in his voice through any front he tried to put up. I’d known him for ten years.

Like I said. Wheelchair promotion. Rocco may have been done in the cockpit, but the Chevaliers were far from done with him.

“I don’t got sunglasses,” I said, “But I did bring a little something to get the taste of hospital food out of your mouth.”

I pulled out a pair of wrappers, and a little extra light came back to Rocco’s eyes. I unwrapped one of the local savory crepes (teriyaki goat meat and local greens) for Rocco and stashed the other in a drawer, before also pulling out a bottle of the local soda.

Rocco eyed it. “Docs warned that too much sucra could cause extra seizures.”

“Well you’re in luck, because it’s mostly rum,” I said.

Rocco howled with delight as he took the bottle. “Kid, I take back every mean thing I’ve said about you.”

I patted him on the leg he still had. “See you when I can, Rocc. I’m due back on the Winter. Gonna find out how we get the bastards that did this to you.”

Chapter 6 – The Waterfall Effect

“What do you mean we’re not pursuing Gyalt?” I asked, probably with a little more heat than was warranted.

Sable raised an eyebrow at me as we walked through the combat services mess.

I felt my face heat. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“No, no. I’m just shocked you finally mustered the balls to shout at me.”

She hit me in the arm and laughed. Then she pursed her lips and looked up at the ceiling. I was confused for a second before I realized that, in her mind, she was actually looking beyond the hull of the Winter and out into the vastness of space, as if she might find some answer in the blackness. “I can’t tell you why we’re not, just yet. Mostly because Swift hasn’t told me. But she asked me some unusual questions. Something’s brewing. Something big.”

“Like, Central, big?”

“Like, bigger than Bashtu, big.”

“Oh,” I said. I scratched at the back of my neck. “But we just re-upped the contract with the central government, didn’t we?”

Sable winked at me. I won’t lie, it still made my heart flutter a bit. “Like I said. Big.”

We ducked through the hatch to the mess hall and loaded a couple of trays. Jacque, Stag, and our newest member of the formation, Dathers, were already seated. With a pang of pain deep in my stomach, I realized this was now the entirety of Third Formation’s active jockeys—except for Rowdy, who I almost forgot about entirely. He barely counted anyway. The little gym rat was probably beating the rags out of a heavy bag somewhere.

As Sable slid her tray onto the table, I straightened my back and barked out “Attention on deck!”

Dathers pushed back his chair and shot about eighty percent of the way to his feet before Stag clapped a hand on his shoulder, trying not to laugh out his mouthful of lunch, and pulled the kid back down into his seat. He was fresh out of the Catalan regulars, still ready to spit and polish anything with a blemish. Hell, still kept his hair in the tight, short wedge Templars favored.

Sable shot me a glare as she slid into her seat, and I barely failed at keeping a smile off my face.

“Very funny,” she said. “Where’s Harris?”

“Gym,” said Jacque.

Sable sighed and pushed her hair back. “I’ll back fill him later. Long story short, I spoke with Swift today. I’m acting Formation Commander until my promo to major makes it official. As soon as the Sixth gets their new greenhorn from the push, Captain Ackhar is going to be coming over to Third to be subcommander. Until then, Vandal is acting subcommander.”

“What?” I asked.

“Makes sense,” said Stag. Jacque nodded.

“What about Rowdy?” I asked. “He’s got seniority.”

“Rowdy thinks he wants it, but he doesn’t,” said Sable.

I raised my hands. “I don’t want it either!”

Sable glanced over at the others.

“Yes you do,” said Jacque. He half smiled at Sable. “You just think you don’t.”

“You don’t want to lead so much you took a team to the Grand Melee and led them straight to the quarter-finals,” added Stag.

“Fuck you guys, you’re supposed to be my friends!”

“Stop fraternizing with your subordinates,” said Sable, hand over her mouth to hide her smile. “It’s been decided.”

Dathers looked between us. “Is this how promotions usually go in the free companies?”

“Pretty much,” said Jacque.

“Some stubborn asses have to be dragged kicking and screaming up through the ranks,” said Sable. “And believe me,” she said with a glare, “Some asses are more stubborn than others.”

“No, some asses just don’t quit,” I said. I leaned my chair back to leer but brought it forward again when Sable raised her fist. “There’s a difference,”

“No ogling your new formation commander,” said Stag.

I sighed and pushed the food on my plate around for a minute. The fact I was only acting subcommander didn’t bother me. If you’ve been around any kind of militarized power structure, you know it’s a giant ramshackle tower of acting this and interim  that. What they really are is a way to squeeze more responsibilities and duties out of someone before their rank and pay caught up. But that’s not what bothered me.

What bothered me is how I got the duty. It felt like Rocco had to get wounded for me to get this, well, not promotion, per se, but collateral position. The chain of command is lubricated with blood. And I know what he’d say if he were here. What’s she thinkin, kid? You’re gonna get us all killed for sure! At least the Chevaliers had a good run! But he wouldn’t actually mean it. Dirty Rocco, who believed a fourteen-year-old gutter trash Teutonian brat could be more than just a vandal, and who’d given me that name so that I’d never forget the depths from which I climbed, wherever I ended up at.

“Just think of it as a promotion without rank, privileges, pay, or respect,” said Stag.

“Feels more like punishment detail,” I said.

“Speaking of punishment,” said Sable, turning towards me. “As your new formation commander. I’d like a full report on why the marines started calling you El Rascador.”

I glanced at Stag, but he just shook his head and looked down at his tray.

Oh shit.