Chapter Seven: Yellowstone, 2041
Chapter Seven: Yellowstone, 2041
Camping trips are a little different in post-America
Patrick collapsed into the hard metal chair, staring blankly at the door to the hallway beyond, feeling numb. Outside, the base was buzzing with the noise of heavy machinery and hundreds of booted feet rushing to and fro.
It took every fiber of his being to peel his eyes from the door and turn to look at his friends, still shocked to see them dressed in military fatigues. Nothing made sense anymore, and if the lingering buzz from the mead hadn’t fortified him then, Patrick was sure he would have sat stubbornly refusing to move until reality started working properly again.
“So,” he forced himself to say, seeing a reflection of his own inner turmoil in their eyes. “Timur, Kim, now what?”
“Sounds like,” Timur grunted, shaking his head, “we’re just going to have to play things by ear. Mimr said that for now we just have to survive, so let’s focus on that.”
“Not sure we have any other choice,” Kim said in a low voice. “I hear footsteps coming down the hall, so there’s no time to try summoning Mimr. Let’s just hope that Chavez lady wasn’t really serious about taking us into combat.”
Somehow, Patrick didn’t think they would be that lucky. The three fell silent, then the door burst open and Sandra Chavez stood there grinning like a madwoman.
“Okay baby scouts!” Chavez cried, waving for them to follow her. “Time to suit up and move out. Step to it, we’ve got a chopper to catch.”
She turned and walked out into the hall, swiftly marching out of sight, her stride long and full of purpose. Patrick, Kim, and Timur shared a look, then as a group stood and followed.
Chavez led them out of the building, then across a wide green space divided by asphalt paths. Everywhere Patrick looked people were rushing around like ants whose nest had just been kicked over. Despite jostling for space among themselves all parted instantly for Chavez, many greeting her with a nod or a smile, the others too busy wrangling carts filled with what looked an awful lot like bombs towards the nearby tarmac. On the farther side of the green was a squat, rather ugly concrete structure covered in drab-colored mesh and guarded by a pair of burly men armed with equally imposing weapons. Chavez walked right up to them, and they waved her inside with hardly a second look.
Patrick glanced back to be sure his friends were making it through the press, then marched up to the entrance after Chavez. Part of him was sure the guards would stop him, but though they stared menacingly as he walked past they didn’t move or speak. Only after he was safely through the doors did Patrick realize he wasn’t breathing, and he suddenly exhaled, feeling light headed. He took a step, then found himself grabbing desperately at a railing in order to avoid falling down a dark flight of stairs.
“Watch your step, man!” Chavez chortled from below. “This is what they call a bunker. Usually, you bury them so it is harder for mean people to find and drop bombs on them. Hence, y’know, the stairs.”
Patrick steadied himself, aware his face had gone bright red. He choked back a retort about poor interior lighting and marched with as much feigned confidence as he could muster down the remaining steps. It didn’t matter, because Chavez didn’t wait, by the time he reached the landing she had already disappeared down a dimly lit corridor.
Patrick walked on, and soon found himself at the entrance of a wide open bay filled with stacks of crates and all manner of military gear. Chavez was talking to a pair of personnel in fatigues who stood casually next to what appeared to be a kiosk filled with an array of expensive-looking equipment.
“Have these people even heard of health and safety regulations?” Timur called out angrily behind him. “That staircase is going to get someone killed!”
“Yeah, it already came close to claiming me,” Patrick called back, seeing Kim a few paces behind Timur, face slightly wan. He stopped next to Patrick, but she marched straight past them, fists balled in irritation as she stepped towards Chavez.
Chavez twisted around, then stepped froward and spoke before Kim could say a word. “Welcome to the armory, baby scouts! Niana and Sangbin are grabbing their diagnostic equipment, and once set up they’ll get you all fitted to a carapace and some real snazzy headgear.”
The pair came out from behind the kiosk a second later, each pushing something that looked like a hospital ward medical cart. Each technician pulled out a wand of some sort plugged into a large computer, passing it over Patrick and his companions several times while instructing them to stand in certain poses. When they were done they disappeared behind the kiosk, where they began loading crates onto a different cart.
“Alright, now for the fun part,” Chavez grinned slyly, scratching her nose. “Get stripped, y’all!”
“I know this is going to sound stupid,” Kim said gruffly, “but… why?”
“Before I answer that,” Chavez said quietly, staring intently at her stubborn charge, “I want you to think for just a split second about how wise it is to question someone with an immense capacity to make your day very unpleasant. Let the concept simmer a spell while our kind engineers get your gear prepped.”
“Be that as it may,” Kim said stubbornly, planting her feet. “I don’t like doing things just because I’m told to. I prefer to know why.”
“Excellent!” Chavez clapped, startling them. “A learner! Those are the best kind of recruits. You’ll do well, so long as you get a sense for the right questions to ask, and quickly, because our lives in this old park are about to get real interesting.”
“Since you gave me a good reason to reply,” Chavez winked at Kim, ignoring the returning glare she received, “here’s your treat, good doggie! The answer is that your current clothes will really, really suck out in the field. Amlog is great with logistics, terrible with designing combat scrubs or boots or user interfaces or, well, anything really. They bring you to us as a complete package per contract, but the first thing I have all my newbies do is swap out the mass-produced junk they fit you with to pass basic muster for something custom-fitted.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Chavez chuckled, “it isn’t out of charity! I just don’t need to deal with you all whining about rashes and blisters and whatnot while I’m working overwatch. Niana and Sangbin have been measuring you in order to pick the right combat nickers to keep your skin in working order under the lovely bugsuits you’ll have to carry all day. Trust me, you do not want to experience the chafing the things can cause!”
Kim grumbled, but began to slowly remove her clothes. Patrick gulped and did the same, while Timur had already finished before his friends had got around to starting.
“Old habits,” he shrugged, smiling sadly while they stripped down to their undergarments.
The two techs returned holding soft bundles wrapped in plastic, handing a parcel to each of the trio. They opened them and got dressed, and Patrick discovered these new drab, multi hued, slightly baggy fatigues were surprisingly soft on the skin yet felt very sturdy. Patrick moved around a bit, testing his range of motion.
“How is it possible that we won’t all sweat to death in these?” Patrick asked, catching Chavez’ eye. “I’ve been out on long hikes with my husband, and every time I’ve tried wearing this much clothing I get drenched in an hour.”
“Cool thing about these scrubs,” Chavez nodded, watching them get dressed like a horse breeder evaluating breeding studs, “is they wick moisture away from your skin. They also equalize your thermal signature, but me, I’m just happy not having to constantly douse my skin in baby powder like back in the day. Dang, but I hated the twenties!”
“Definitely the worst decade ever,” agreed the tech Niana, calling out from behind a shelf deeper in the armory. “Though this one is already in the running too, if you ask me.”
“No doubt,” Chavez laughed. “Oh, and I forgot to mention: these scrubs are also lined with our special blend of custom printed Missoula Kevlar for a last layer of of protection against projectiles and shrapnel. They’re also impermeable to pretty much every chemical or biological agent the Deserets, Texans, or Lakers have ever come up with. All kinds of awesomesauce going on with these!”
The techs returned, each pulling another cart, this time piled with an assortment of heavy gear. Patrick had the sinking feeling that it was all going to be extremely heavy.
“So, what is the combat load we’re expected to carry?” Timur asked, sounding weary. “Fifty, sixty kilos? Tell me you all have some kind of exoskeleton technology to make lugging everything around a bit easier? I mean, these are the twenty-forties, am I right?”
Patrick and Kim both stared at Timur in alarm. Typically, asking what decade it was, even rhetorically, was a strange move. Given the circumstances, it was even weirder. But Chavez only nodded, as if this were a perfectly normal inquiry.
“They sure are,” she shrugged, “and if you want to join the engineers after your training phase, then yeah, you can play with exos. But they’re usually carrying a couple hundred kilos around and half of them have graduate degrees, so the bar for admission is set kind of high. Scouts like me prefer mobility to raw power, and you don’t need to go to school for a decade to learn how to hide in the woods and call down fire on anyone unlucky enough to wander past.”
“Oh, mobility, sure,” Timur laughed. I can totally be mobile while carrying half my body weight on my back. Clearly, I’m secretly an ant.”
Chavez laughed too, then whirled around. Patrick glanced over his shoulder and saw that the grouchy man named Jackson had joined them in the bunker. She waved to Sangbin and Niana and walked over to him. They spoke for some time, but were too far away and speaking too quietly for him to overhear.
Sangbin approached Patrick, looking him up and down. “Lucky you, big guy,” the tech said, grinning. “I’ve got a carapace in stock that used to belong to someone with exactly your body type. Stand up straight now, arms out, please.”
He complied, and with some effort the engineer lifted one of the pieces of equipment off the cart and hoisted it around Patrick. It enveloped his entire torso, and when in place the tech hit a button which caused the inner layer of the carapace to form a seal with the garments beneath. Patrick felt a heavy weight drop onto his shoulders, and nearly staggered.
“I said up straight, man,” Sangbin muttered, though not unkindly, helping to steady. “Alright, readings look good and you didn’t buckle at the knees. Once you get used to the way it sits on your upper spine it ought to wear pretty well. Just don't do any jumping jacks until your muscles build up.”
Patrick looked down at his chest, thinking that the thing was called a carapace for a reason. He was all but encased in a material made of ceramic and plastic and covered in a dull pattern that made it difficult for his eyes to focus on any particular point. He’d done enough hiking in his life to know exactly how tired the outfit would leave him after only a few hours of wear.
Niana had taken care of Kim while Sangbin worked with Patrick, now both swiftly turned to outfit Timur. Soon the trio stood there, all looking exactly as they felt: half-insect, half-human, and entirely awkward. While Sangbin fiddled with some equipment on the carts, Niana lined them up and lectured in a bored sort of tone, clearly having given the same speech many times.
“First things first,” the engineer said sharply. “I am sick and tired of scraping bits of people out of these things. So please, please repeat this mantra to yourself whenever you have some quiet time: The carapace is magic, but I am not. The carapace might survive a direct hit from a tank shell, but I will not. The carapace is cool, but the carapace cannot think for itself. If the person wearing it can’t either, the carapace is fated to have bits of mushy former owner forever seeping into its nooks and crannies. Niana dislikes this very much, just as she does speaking in the third person.”
“What Niana is trying to get across to you all,” Sangbin chortled and called over to the group, is that the armor is a very useful bit of kit. But, like anything, it has limits. Fewer than you, for the most part, so either way, don’t get cocky!”
“Exactly,” Niana nodded, “as my colleague will confirm, the carapace is tough. But it isn’t just a couple inches of Chobham thirty-nine you’re lugging about. Your batteries and computing units and comms are all packed in there too. So taking a hit is always very bad for combat efficiency, even if you personally survive the impact.”
“Ain’t that the gods’ own truth!” Chavez called from behind them. “I dunno what nonsense the recruiters spouted at you, but movie-style heroics have no place on the battlefield. When you take a hit, even if you survive, you are almost certainly a mission kill and a liability to everyone else on your team. So do everything you possibly can to not get shot or blown up! I hate having to abandon a mission in order to drag someone back to base because they stood up at the wrong time.”
When Patrick turned to look at Chavez, he saw what he assumed would be the end result of his own fitting out process. She was already dressed, and almost unrecognizable. Almost all her body below the neck was entirely covered by armor. Aside from the carapace encasing her torso, there were now similar, smaller versions strapped to her upper and lower arms and legs, a spur from the thigh and forearm pieces guarding her knees and elbows. Sturdy boots covered her feet, and to complete the ensemble she was now pulling a pair of thin, grip enhanced gloves onto her hands. Jackson was now nowhere to be seen.
“So, moving on,” Chavez went on, checking various pockets on the gear. “All that computing power packed in there will keep you in communication with the rest of your team and other units in the field through a shared data link that feeds into the Missoula tactical network. Voice, radio, text, graphics, data—all commo runs through it, all data anyone uploads is accessible to anyone who needs it. A weapon far more important than anything you’ll ever carry, and don’t ever forget it!”
Timur mumbled something inaudible, and everyone looked at him. He only realized then that he’d been overheard, and oddly for him, actually seemed embarrassed about it.
“Oh, sorry… ” Timur grinned sheepishly. “I was just talking to myself.”
Chavez and Niana waited, clearly expecting him to say what was on his mind. He looked at Kim and Patrick, and shook his head uncertainly.
“Ugh, this is going to sound stupid,” Timur grimaced. “I was just saying to myself that you people seem to go out of your way to equip new recruits with a lot of expensive gear. Which is kind of… not my experience.”
“Oh, Sandra,” Sangbin laughed, though not unkindly. “You got one of the last holdouts from one of the old nation-state armies, didn’t you? I bet he even waits for orders in a fight!”
“No, she didn’t,” Timur said quickly. “I’ve never been in any official army. My experience with guns and fighting and stuff was… different.”
“Aaaaaah!” Chavez exclaimed, slapping her hands together. “That explains it! Jackson told me that your blood tests all came back negative, but there was no way you whacked a Deseret tank and held down a dismount team without at least some prior experience behind weapon sights.”
“The blood tests were negative?” Kim asked, shaking her head. “Negative for what?”
“Negative for any record of any of you in the old national military databases,” Chavez replied. “And since everyone who has been in a sanctioned military force at any point in the past twenty years or so has had their DNA profile sent to the international database, and none of you is much older than thirty, Jackson is of the opinion that you lot are infiltrators. And that we should shoot you.”
Patrick looked at his friends, a thrill of fear surging through him that he tried hard not to let show. He hadn’t said anything to either of them, frankly too busy being shocked by every other impossible thing that was happening to them today, but he had begun to suspect that the world a quarter century into the future was an extremely dangerous place. This information confirmed his fears.
Kim, to her credit, seemed completely undaunted. “So,” she said almost breezily, “Timur’s question still stands, doesn’t it? Why are you giving us all this gear if you suspect that we’re spies?”
“Because I’m a big ol’ softie romantic at heart,” Chavez grinned wickedly. “And I figure that even if you folks are spies, we can win you over. The Missoula Regiment is as close as you’re gonna get to the good guys out here in the new wild west. Besides, this op will be a fantastic test of your intentions. Gonna get hairy out there, dudes! We’re playing bait hoping to attract the attention of some real big guns. Whether infiltrators or poor bloody fools who got fed a line by a corporate recruiter, you’re gonna regret your life choices for a few days.”
“So, Sandra,” Niana asked while helping Sangbin sort more gear into three piles, “we’re finally taking out Southern Butte? About time, if so, though I certainly hope you’ve come up with a good plan.”
Chavez paused and gave the room a quick once over. “Short answer,” she replied in a low voice, “is yes. Have to keep the details real close to the chest, but yup, that’s about where we’re headed in a hot minute.”
Sangbin and Niana shared a look, then Niana nodded and picked up one of the equipment piles and took it to Kim. Sangbin grabbed another and walked up to Timur, while Chavez brought the third to Patrick.
“Once we’re airborne we can go over all the gory details,” Chavez said, grinning at Patrick. “You all will be locked into the tactical network anyway, no way you could get word out to anyone even if you wanted to.”
“But,” Chavez continued, looking into his eyes, “I am putting a lot of trust in my gut with you three. Which goes completely against my training and experience and all rational logic, as well as the recommendation of my closest colleague and dear friend. Please do not give me yet another reason to trust my head over my kinder bits. Don’t betray our trust, and the Missoula Regiment will look after you. That’s the pact I make with everyone I serve with, and its one I’ll honor in blood.”
Like she was performing the coronation of a king, Chavez carefully set the helmet on Patrick’s head. He was surprised to find it was almost identical to what fighter pilots like his husband wore in the cockpit, though it felt heavy enough it must be armored like the carapace. He felt the weight of it pressing down on his lower neck, and wondered how long it would be until his entire body ached from the strain.
The world was muffled at first, but after a second Chavez tapped the back of the helmet and suddenly he could hear again. “Testing, testing, one-two-three,” she said. “Can you hear me now?”
He nodded. Her voice was slightly digitized, but Patrick discovered it was remarkably easy to pick it out from the suddenly enhanced ambient noise of rumbling vehicles and rushing boots outside. Patrick looked at his friends and saw that they were all now wearing helmets too. He also noted that each was equipped with an air filtration mask dangling from a clip on one side of the helmet, and reaching up he felt his own.
The techs and Chavez helped their charges put on boots and gloves, then assisted in adding the various mini-carapaces to their limbs. A few final adjustments to help keep the various pieces in place while maintaining their full range of movement, and the transformation was complete.
“Looks like we’re good to go!” Chavez nodded in approval, stepping back to survey the final result. “I love to see new recruits all shiny and outfitted for the first time! The gear never looks as good as it does just off the shelf. But we don’t have time to hang around looking in the mirror. Our chariot awaits. We ride, to Idaho!”
Niana and Sangbin nodded in farewell to Patrick and his friends, then split off with Chavez and shared a few quiet words while making adjustments to her own helmet, which she held in one hand. A minute later, she turned and motioned for Patrick and his friends to follow her out of the bunker.
On the surface, the activity had intensified. As Chavez parted the crowds with her mere presence, blazing a trail towards the tarmac, Patrick found that whatever sound processing was going on in his headgear had the effect of sharply differentiating sounds by distance but also re-scaling them to amplify soft noises and muffle loud ones. Conversations happening nearby seemed almost too loud, while the whump-whump of helicopter rotors were distinct yet distant, like an echo that slowly grew as they came in sight of a line of helicopters near the runway. They were accompanied by a matching line of tall trucks covered in armor plating and topped with small turrets.
Chavez led them to the back of one of the helicopters, a large and ungainly beast with a ramp lowered to the tarmac allowing access to the interior. Benches lined the sides, and Patrick was much relieved that these helicopters were large enough that he would be able to stretch his legs. The portholes lining the sides were somewhat larger too, but no less covered in grime. It took a few minutes to learn how to arrange safety harnesses that would bind them to the side of the aircraft. In that time Jackson arrived, helmet on, carrying two large boxy assault rifles of the same type they’d seen him wielding before. He handed one to Chavez, who nodded in thanks.
“Hey, where are ours?” Timur asked, looking annoyed.
“Seriously?” Jackson laughed. “I’m not letting one of you shoot me in the back. The minor risk of you figuring out how to get a signal to some Deserets I’ll accept, but not letting you take a shot at my people.”
Chavez rolled her eyes. “Jackson, stop being so damned dramatic. I’ve pre-set their gear to shut down if they even touch a rifle. Besides, they’ll be too busy on the lasers or hiding from incoming or asking stupid questions to do anything naughty.”
Jackson glared at Chavez. “How many times am I going to have to remind you, Sandra, of company policy regarding profanity? As we’ve discussed, the Founder sees it as a sign of mental weakness. We signed a contract, so we’ve got to respect his wishes. Besides, you know full well I happen to agree with him.”
She snorted, but otherwise ignored him. It seemed that the helicopter had been waiting on Jackson’s arrival specifically, because as soon as he had grumpily settled himself next to Chavez on the bench opposite Patrick and his friends, the ramp slowly closed and the helicopter’s engines roared. She put on her helmet, winking once at Patrick while the aircraft began to move.
Patrick’s stomach lurched as the aircraft began to move hesitantly upward, jerking like a badly maintained elevator. He found a porthole, and tried to stare out into the sky beyond. When the little of the outside visible between Chavez’ and Jackson’s heads showed the upper canopy of the evergreen forest that stretched beyond the airfield and into the surrounding mountains, their ascent ending in a sharp jerk.
The engines strained, the whump of the rotors accelerating dramatically as they struggled to pull the helicopter further into the sky. Chavez fixed the mask to her helmet and motioned for Patrick and the others to do so as well. When he heard her voice again, it sounded as if it was being transmitted directly into his ears, free of any form of static interference.
“And straaaaaain little Stallion,” Chavez cheered, laughing and pumping a fist at the ceiling. “Youuu caaaaan doooooo iiiiit!”
The helicopter lurched again, as if the engine had kicked into a new gear. Fight against gravity won for the time being, the trees began to sink outside the window. Patrick saw a companion helicopter out the small window, and suddenly understood why theirs was having a hard time taking off.
Underneath the aircraft’s belly, attached by thick cables, was one of the armored trucks. The aircraft gained elevation in a barely controlled swaying motion, and he realized the strange feeling in his gut meant his own aircraft must be moving the same way.
“Sorry if anyone gets motion sickness,” Chavez chuckled. “The first part of a transit at high elevations with a slung load like this is always sucktabulous. It’ll get better once we’re cruising at altitude. I’ll let you all sleep a spell then, since we’ll be airborne for a few hours, but first, we gotta get through your briefing for the op.”
Chavez slid her fingers over one gloved palm, and suddenly a soft humming began in Patrick’s helmet. The heavy visor covering the space from his eyebrows to where the mask snapped in around his chin lit up with a faint light, and a digital heads up display appeared.
A blur distracted him, drawing his attention to the helicopter’s small window. A shape zoomed swiftly by, but even as it should have disappeared from view, it transformed into a digital outline. Patrick actually felt as if he could see it through the metal wall, and saw that words and numbers and symbols hovered around it. Most was gibberish to him, but then he caught a glimpse of a name: Saab-Mikoyan Super Gripen.
Without warning the visor went pitch black, and when it flipped back on a moment later it positively dazzled him with a stream of images, characters, and even a few strange symbols that looked like particularly rude emojis. Through the information overwhelm Patrick heard Chavez’ voice, and after a few seconds the cacophony resolved itself into something almost orderly.
“Sorry about that,” Chavez said, “but gotta do a hard reset of the interface to let it build a new user profile. Just relax and let your eyes wander naturally. The system will work out how to most efficiently display the info. Should already be done, in fact, whole thing is pretty intuitive.”
Most of the information disappeared, leaving Patrick staring at Chavez holding up her gloved hands and wiggling her fingers as if she was a hypnotist in an old-time horror film. Boxes with text and graphics began to appear and arrange themselves around his field of view.
“Alright,” Chavez said, “so to navigate once I release your displays back to your control, remember that these gloves are covered in small pressure and friction sensors. They’re haptic and the software is adaptive, so you’ll quickly work out how to move stuff around and bring up different views, log in and out of camera feeds, and all that good stuff. For now, I’ll bring up all the smart stuff we’ll need to review before we land at FOB Craters.”
As Patrick looked on, a heavily annotated satellite image grew larger in the center of his field of view. Icons and other tags began to appear, and experimenting with his controls he found it reasonably simple to select features and bring up information about them. It was so easy, in fact, that he quickly felt overwhelmed.
“Alright,” Chavez said curtly, “so what you are looking at here is a map of the area where the former American states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah came together. The Missoula Regiment has been deployed out here for years, operating under a United Nations Security Council contract awarded to our parent company.”
“If your recruiter didn’t tell you where you were signing up to play combat scout, just know that we’re the folks tasked with preventing any of the post-American successor states from taking control over what is now the last remaining intercontinental ballistic missile launch field in the entire world. One hundred and fifty missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, all sitting around waiting to be misused.”
“Yeah,” Timur snorted, “definitely missed that in the… uh… recruiter’s pitch. Rogue nukes in the ruins of the United States, you say? Oh joy!”
“You don’t know the half of it, kid,” Jackson grunted. “Not even a tenth.”
“Moving on,” Chavez shook her head, sounding sad. “So, aside from maybe the Cascadians out west and the Canadians up north, nobody in the neighborhood is particularly pleased with us being here. It’s been difficult holding off attacks from the south and east over the past few years. But ever since the Deserets took control of the old air force boneyards in the ruined Southwest and started receiving serious covert logistical support from the Texans, they’ve gotten particularly aggressive. Control of the Great Basin isn’t enough for them, it seems, they want all of the Snake River watershed too.”
“Although the Boise Treaty was supposed to delineate zones of control in the region, the Deserets have kept right on raiding our supply convoys and generally making it clear that they plan to take over everything they can. If they can push up to the continental divide unchallenged, they will be able to throw a wedge between our key bases at Camp Yellowstone and Camp Missoula.”
The map zoomed in, and several bright arrows and other indicators appeared, focusing on southeastern Idaho. At the center was a label, larger and redder than the rest: Big Southern Butte. A large number of threatening looking red icons clustered around it.
“Two months ago,” Chavez continued, “the Dessies set up a base on Southern Butte in direct violation of the Boise Treaty. We’ve been harassing them ever since, but haven’t been able to convince them to leave. They apparently hope we’ll be forced to launch a major assault, which would be a bloody mess because they’ve filled the height with every piece of artillery they’ve been able to get their hands on. Long range rockets, short range howitzers, and a ridiculous number of surface to air missiles to guard them.”
“To make our life even more of a hassle, in a dry lake bed about ten klicks west of their pretty new fortress they’ve encamped a heavy combat battalion with enough firepower to cut off our southern supply route entirely. So, like I said, we’ve been poking at their defenses for a few weeks to keep them from getting too comfortable, but some form of assault is inevitable if we want to make them leave. We know it and they know it, so a few days back, the Scouts were relieved and replaced by the Guards, which we intended as an escalation to get their attention.”
Kim interjected. “Wait, I’m confused, who are these Scouts and Guards? I thought we were the former one… what does the other do, defend stuff?”
“The Missoula Regiment,” Jackson cut in, seeming annoyed at the need, “is broken into three Detachments, one of which is headquartered at Camp Yellowstone. Detachments have three Battle Groups: Scout, Guard, and Lancer. They’re functional groupings, while infantry, engineer, or combat scout is a job.”
“I see,” Kim replied. “And so what’s the difference between these groups?”
“Don’t interrupt me and I’ll get to it,” Jackson grumbled. “And remind me to give you a smart book when we get back, so I have to answer fewer basic questions. The Scouts rely on speed and stealth backed by enough air and artillery support to pack a punch at the point of impact. Guards are more focused on defense and counterattack across a broad area, and have lots of infantry, combat engineers, and artillery. Lancers are shock troops, a kind of heavy cavalry. They have more tanks and mobile howitzers and hit enemy positions like a freight train.”
“Thanks for that excellent summary,” Chavez chuckled, pausing while the helicopter took a fairly sharp left turn. “Whew, really feel turns in the gut when pulling a sling load, huh! Anyway, so: we pulled the Scouts back and replaced them with the Guards, giving them a breather, except one group from the Scouts is breaking off to undertake this little airborne flanking maneuver. And just to complete the effect, we’re positioning the Lancers out in front of Southern Butte to present a direct and immediate threat to their continued occupation of that ugly little piece of real estate.”
“We are presently flying behind the safety of the mountains, heading to the west of our target, where will stage from a forward operating base in an old national park called Craters of the Moon. From there we will infiltrate to a point at the outer edge of anti-tank missile range, then take some shots at targets of opportunity.”
“Playing bait, you said,” Patrick murmured, not liking the sound of that at all.
Chavez nodded. “If we’re lucky and we do a convincing enough job, the Deserets on SoBu, as we’re calling the place, should wake up tomorrow morning believing that either Lancers are a diversion for our sneak attack or that our attack is the diversion meaning that the Lancers really are coming to shove them off their hill. In either case, their best move is to try and eliminate the weaker threat as quickly as possible.”
“And I take it a heavy battalion or whatever,” Kim said, “will have us badly outmatched?”
“Mm-hm,” Chavez replied. “They’ll know that they outgun anything that could have moved that far from our main bases without them noticing, and they won’t pass up the opportunity to do some damage while they can. Rare enough they score a clean kill without suffering tenfold pain in return, so I can’t see them missing the chance. And as soon as they deploy those big guns out of their bunkers to wipe us out, every bit of long-range firepower that we have available gets dropped onto that hill at the same time. Rockets, shells, missiles launched from strike jets. Game over.”
Patrick swallowed, staring out the window into the dark Montana sky. At that moment, it suddenly became too much. He and his friends were heading out to the front lines of what sounded like a minor war in a future that was like something out of a bad movie.
Patrick might have married a military man, but he himself was no soldier. And what he knew of war on the ground came from reports and quiet conversations between drunk veterans. The reality of it did not appeal to him, and what he had seen on the ground in Idaho, the idea of experiencing it again, was too much to bear.
He felt mortally tired, and simply tuned out the rest of the terrifying briefing as best as he could, almost wishing he had no idea what was coming. It was going to be a long night, and despite having his friends by his side, all he wanted to do was go home.
But the whump-whump of rotor blades went on as the sun sank in the west. And the next day showed no promise of being any better than the last.