Sigma-22

Jarret was still afraid of him. After three weeks of near constant patrols, the slim driver still flinched away from Miles' gaze. It was disappointing, but Miles couldn't blame him for it. After all, he was the superior creature, Jarret's fear was inevitable, if nothing more than an instinctual reaction to a deadlier predator. The unit push crackled to life.

"Sierra Third, this is Sierra First; status report."

Miles glanced back over his shoulder in the direction of First, but found only the impenetrable mesh of jungle. The six tanks of Sierra patrol should be crouched restlessly at one kilometer intervals along ridge Sigma-22, heat rising in waves from their armored carapaces. Jarret's voice sounded bored and flat as he answered.

"Sierra First, this is Sierra Third, in position and scanning, over."

"Roger, Third, maintain position. First out."

The young driver drank noisily from his canteen, scrubbing the back of his hand across his mouth when he was finished. He glanced around before exhaling slowly, his cheeks puffing outward.

"Hey, TC," he called, "finish the game?"

"Sure," replied Miles, his tone easy. He stood and stretched, sweeping his eyes across the landscape, before kneeling next to the barrel of the maingun.

It was just after midday, the remorseless sun turning the amber and maize jungle foliage of the valley into a sea of fire. The thick canopy stretched out from their position in all directions, interrupted only by the Shieff Mountains half a click to the north, and the steel spires of Port Donovan to the west. A starliner at the corporate docks vented drive plasma, the geyser of superheated gasses blazing like a miniature sun before dissipating into the humid air, which smelled of sap from crushed stems and branches. A five meter wide scar through the middle of the jungle marked the tank's passage to their current patrol position. Apart from Jarret, Miles' only other company was the Valkyrie-class Low Altitude Vehicle that rested hull down, silent except for the muted hum from its powerplant. The two of them could have easily sat inside, cooled by the tank's climate control system, but staring at unchanging MFDs for hours on end only made the tedium worse. Jarret's deck of cards helped pass the time, although it didn't come free: Miles was down two hundred to the driver.

"Seven card stud, deuces wild, jacks or better to win." Jarret laid out the first cards. Miles fished through his pocket, dropped a coin down next to an access plate marked `Open using shielded tools--gravity generating circuitry inside', and peered at his hole card. Jarret matched it, and dealt the next pair of cards. A clutch of winged reptiles took to noisy flight somewhere to the north, and Jarret had laid four more cards before Miles' attention was refocussed on the game. He was coming out with a low straight, eight high, while Jarret's hand held the promise of a full house. Jarret laid a four of clubs in front of Miles, and a jack of hearts to himself. Miles glanced away to the north again, frowning as something grated just below his audible spectrum. He unsnapped the thumb-break on his holster. Jarret coughed and gestured to the pall of smoke that hovered on the far side of the valley. The tanks of November Company were mixing it up fiercely with several colonial units of heavy infantry. The solid whump-whump-whump of 20cm mass conversion cannon echoed across the valley, accentuated by the high-pitched whine of full-auto small arms. Distance turned the dazzling flashcrack! of the heavy batteries into a muted thunder.

"What do you think?"

"I'll raise ten." Miles stacked his coins. Jarret matched it and raised him five, pushing the discs across with casual fingers. Miles opened his mouth to call. A breath of wind flipped his hole card over, revealing the straight.

"Damn," he cursed, leaning back.

A two centimeter MCC bolt slashed through the air where Miles' head was, singing the hair from his face and blistering the skin. Droplets of molten armor splattered them as the shot expended itself against the sloped turret. Orange afterimages danced across Miles' retinas. The MetaSols' reactions were nearly identical. Jarret dove for the cockpit, knowing that his best chance for survival lay with ten centimeters of composite armor between him and the Colonial sniper. Miles twisted and dove for the gunner's cupola, but drew his service issue 10mm and fired at the same time. Any one else would have needed another shot to trace back the sniper's position, and even then return fire would be ineffective if he moved. Miles was much more than anyone else, though, and his pistol roared as he dove for the gunner's hatch. Sunlight glinted from the heavy barrel of the two cm shoulder weapon as it toppled from the Colonial's nerveless fingers. Pale Horse's fans revved up to speed, and she staggered into the air, throwing Miles against the cupola hatch coaming.

"Go!" he snarled, dropping the rest of the way into the fighting compartment. A pair of fast attack gun jeeps crashed through the foliage. Miles twisted the controller, and the turret slid easily, the crosshairs tracking across the screen until they intersected with an indig unit. His foot rocked the floor trigger, and the maingun next to him roared azure hellfire.

Massive capacitors discharged the beta-wave generators, and 2 kilograms of Franconium converted spontaneously to raw energy. Helical magnetic fields within the gunbarrel channeled the plasma down range, and the ACV sublimed as it absorbed a megajoule of energy. Miles felt rather than heard the sound of the autoloader as it rammed a new shell into the breach. The vulcan cupola gun chopped after the second unit, sweeping its gun deck clear of soldiers.

"Sierra First, this is Sierra Third, hostile armor units maneuvering to attack. Moving to intercept." Miles stomped on the pedal and the dimly visible outline of an APC disappeared in a flash of sunbright actinics. He was aware that the expression that twisted across his face could have been misconstrued as pleasant, had it not danced in the light of burning bodies. Colonial armor spilled out of the jungle, and Miles fanned the joystick back and forth, his finger clamped on the trigger. The cupola vulcan howled, hammering 20mm osmium penetrators downrange. Light mass conversion cannons, 4 and 5cm vehicle mounts, sent bolts snapping past. They wouldn't penetrate the heavy armor of the Valkyries, but a lucky shot could disable a drive fan or a cupola gun. Slammers, shoulder launched anti-armor missiles, arced overhead. The second hose went active, the air-defense radar tracking the incoming warheads. Superdense candle-pin sized rounds blew through the thin missile casings, detonating them ten meters short of the hull. Jarret opened the drivefans, and Pale Horse leapt forward.

"Sierra Fifth and Sixth, move up to support Third!"

Miles rocked the foot trip again as Pale Horse cut through the lead elements of the Colonial ambush. The voices over the comm meant nothing to him: the banshee wail of the vulcan gun filled his mind, and his heart hammered in time to the beat of the main twenty. It was the only thing he'd ever be good at, the one thing they'd built him to do: Kill. Every process in his body was optimized for lethality and survivability. Explosive rounds from 25mm chainguns sparked off the tank's armor, as inconsequential as rain. Pale Horse crested the ridge, and rang under the impacts of five MCC bolts.

The Colonial Militia had used a shallow valley behind the ridge as the staging area for their artillery and two battalions of light armor. 30 ton tracked APCs and fast-attack guncars on ground effect skirts had waited in defilade until the abortive ambush. Now the depression was a boiling cauldron of smoke and steel as the Colonials tried to press their advantage.

The 5cm bolts couldn't penetrate the heavy cerramo- composite armor with a single shot like the mainguns of the tanks could, but three or four hits in the same area delivered enough energy to heat the material to the point where it melted off the slope sides like butter on a hot griddle. Jarret slammed the throttles to their max stop, trying to maneuver out of the killing zone he found himself in. The twin vulcan cannons shrieked lead downrange into the Militia units, and Miles held the foot trip to the floor, blasting out five rapid rounds. The fighting compartment reeked of ozone and outgassed chemicals from the shells. Three light MCC bolts converged on one of the drive fans, puncturing its thin armor plate. The motor failed in a blaze of sparks, and the fan itself disintegrated in a blossom of keening metal. Four more bolts ripped through the damaged sector in the armor, metal fusing at their delicate touch. One of the grav generators overloaded and blew, sending chunks of armor cartwheeling away from Pale Horse's lifting body. Heavy monopoles pulsed randomly for a second until the AI could shut the damaged liftdrive down. The tank grounded hard, sliding sideways for fifteen meters. Stabilizers locked the shaking out of Miles' target reticle, and he jammed the foot trip down, ripping out the remainder of his basic load. The heavy 20cm MCC, rotating in response to Miles' hand on the turret control, fired once for every two degrees of turn. Armored cars and APCs exploded with green-white brilliance under the fusillade, and the air around the tank shimmered with heat. Jarret screamed from the driver's cockpit as his instrumentation shorted out under the massive power drain. Electric arcs cascaded across Pale Horse's armored deck. The hull rang like an anvil as a dozen MCC bolts pinned the warmachine against the hill where it had slid to a stop. Another fan blew. Miles watched the counter in the corner of his vision block scroll upwards. The autoloader whined pitifully as it loaded shells into the readyracks. His last long burst from the main cannon had degraded the barrel by 20% of its useful life. The next round might overload the magnetic coils, causing the energy flux from the converting Franconium to expend itself in the breech instead of downrange.

The counter halted at twenty, and Miles stomped the foot trigger. Three 20cm charges ripped the sky at once. Sierra Fifth and Sixth had taken up position on the ridgeline and were firing down into the melee. Watching Pale Horse take everything they could dish out and fire back, the Colonials broke and fled. APCs collided with guncars in their haste to escape the zone. Miles fired at anything that twitched until the counter read 0 again. The autoloader whined and jammed, the breech of the gun having become caked with plastic residue and recondensed metal. Slapping the master cutoff switch, Miles boosted himself out of the fighting compartment. His arms trembled, but supported him as he swung his legs over the side of the turret. Exposed areas of his skin prickled, and the back of his throat was raw. Pale Horse sat skewed on her lifting body, half of her fans blown away and the liftdrive damaged beyond repair. The tank's armor glowed and bubbled in a dozen places. In as many others the density-enhanced material had melted and flowed onto the ground. Jarret lay half out of the driver's cockpit, his body smoking. A 4cm MCC bolt had amputated his right arm just above the elbow, cauterizing the stump in the process, and turning the exposed bone to carbon. The young driver was still breathing though. Miles pulled him into the lee of the tank. Sierra Fifth and Sixth snorted past, pursuing the remnants of the Colonial force. The slender muzzles of their main batteries nosed delicately through the smoke that curled from the burning carcasses of armored vehicles. Sierra First came over the unit push.

"Sierra Third, status report!"

Miles keyed his comm, glancing around at the wreckage.

"Sierra First, Sierra Third. Colonial armor force destroyed. Request immediate medical evac."

"Roger, we have wagons inbound, hold what you have. Sierra First, out."

Jarret's eyelids fluttered.

"TC? D'we win?"

Miles looked over his shoulder again, grimacing silently as the miasma of spilled fuel, sublimed armor, ozone, scorched vegetation, and burnt flesh and feces swept over him.

"Yeah, we won."

Pale Horse pinged as sections of her hullmetal cooled at different rates. Jarret coughed, his face slick with perspiration. Miles offered him a drink from his canteen.

"What's it mean?" asked the driver, gulping water.

Miles stood, the setting sun turning his dull battledress into a vestiture of blood. To him it meant failure. He had been taken off guard, and only luck and chance had turned the tide against the attackers. He wondered if Jarret knew the price of the lesson taught. To both of them.

"Mean? It means we were better than they were," Miles lied.

Jarret choked and began to giggle hysterically. He may have been crying, but Miles couldn't tell the difference.

"Name?" The nurse's tone was businesslike but her smile was genuine enough. Miles could read the tension in her shoulders and the tracery of red around her hazel eyes told of a lack of rest. He smiled back.

"Sergeant Tank Commander Miles Hansen, I'm here to see Jarret Davies."

The RN's fingers brushed across her touchpad, her eyes darting to the flatscreen display set into the desk. Miles glanced around as the computer searched for the appropriate information. The base hospital was a hive of activity, and no small reason was the fact that it was the most extensively equipped and modernized facility in Port Donovan. White suited medical personnel escorted incoming patients to examination rooms, or ferried them to and from surgery. Those whose injuries still allowed them to walk meandered through the bustle on their way to a lounge or to visit friends. Miles picked out a couple MetaSols recovering from injuries. It took a lot to send a MetaSol to the hospital, and even more to keep him there overnight. Jarret's wound qualified.

"Sergeant? Your friend is in room 3208, right down the hall there and take the stairs up." The nurse smiled at him, pointing.

"Thanks." Miles tucked his left hand into his pocket and moved off through the crowd. Emerging from the stairway onto the third floor, he consulted the small plaque on the wall before turning left. Considerably less traffic filled the septic white corridor, and Miles glanced into an open door as he passed by. An aged woman sat by the window, wrapped in a pale yellow shawl. Her alabaster hair stood straight away from the shrunken leathery skin that clung to her skull. It waved slightly from some unseen breeze. She smiled brilliantly at him as he passed. I will never grow old thought Miles. He shook himself and continued on. Jarret's door was second to last on the right side of the hallway. Miles paused outside, watching a single mote of dust dance in the sunlight coming through the window at the end of the hall. He rapped gently on the door before twisting the knob.

"Jarret?"

"Hey, TC! C'mon in." Jarret beckoned somewhat awkwardly with his left hand from where he sat, half reclined, in bed. The stump where his right arm used to be was still swathed in bandages, but Miles could see the metal and plastic connectors for the artificial replacement dangling down. He smiled carefully.

"Hey, Jarret, how's it going?"

Jarret shrugged, grinning.

"Oh, I've had better days. I'm having to learn to spank it left-handed, but there's a cute blonde nurse from Ward 5 that stops by to help me out sometimes."

Miles chuckled and shook his head, pulling up a chair to sit in. Trust Jarret to find the most personal of inconveniences to share.

"How long before you get the new arm?"

Jarret glanced down at his stump, lifting it up and shaking the leads and connectors that sprouted from the ceramic plate melded to his humerus.

"Supposedly within the week, but it'll probably be delayed. It'll still be awhile before I'll be able to use it again, at least to what I'm used to. I have to relearn how to make it move." Jarret smiled self-consciously, flipping one of the wires back and forth. Silence descended on the room. Miles ground his thumb into the palm of his left hand, unsure of what to say. He didn't even know why he'd come here, or what he was hoping to find. Was he looking for absolution? Forgiveness? He couldn't even put a name to his sin.

"You know," started Jarret, watching his stump, "for awhile after the, after the accident, I was kinda bitter about it. I mean, we all know we're gonna die someday, but we never really think about just coming close." He smiled, then looked up to meet Miles' gaze.

"But I'm not angry anymore. I know you did what had to be done to the best of your abilities and I might really be dead if it weren't for you."

Miles sat very still, staring past Jarret. Abruptly he smiled, facial muscles contracting smoothly.

"Hey, thanks." There was the briefest of pauses.

"I needed to hear that."

Jarret smiled and nodded. Miles glanced around, then stood up, brushing the palms of his hands against his khaki battledress.

"I've got to get back, they'll be expecting me soon. See you around."

"Hey thanks for stopping by, TC." Jarret waved with his left hand again. Miles shut the door quietly behind him.