One Good Soldier

we're getting you out of here, got it?'

Tie into his health-monitoring system and keep me updated, Tommy thought to his AIC.

Affirmative.

'I'm good, Gunny.'

'Gunny, I think we should get to cover,' the second lieutenant ordered.

'Good call, sir.' Tommy and Second Lieutenant Nelms helped the private up and then bounced twice up the hill to the rock pile.

'You know,' Danny Bates started, 'these damned rock piles are all over this valley and up this ridge. What the fuck are they?'

'I don't know, Danny,' Tommy replied. 'But right now they sure are handy as hell to have around.'

'Spoil piles,' Second Lieutenant Nelms said. The tone of his voice couldn't have been more indifferent if he'd tried.

'Sir?' Tommy asked.

'These piles are the rocks they dug out to make those ant hills, Gunny. They're called spoil piles.'

'Of course, sir. I didn't see that.' Tommy looked left and right and could see the piles as far as his sensors could see, which was to the horizon of the facility. The facility was built on an asteroid that had been blown in half, so it was basically flat on the QMT side and round on the other. That meant that the suit sensors could see many kilometers in either direction, barring hills and ridgelines and spoil piles and artificial structures, which there were plenty of.

'Woah,' Bates moaned. 'If that means there's an ant hill for each one of these things, then we are in some thick-ass shit!'

'I'm afraid you're right, Corporal,' Nelms replied. 'Way thicker than we can manage with the firepower we have with us.'

'So, do we dig in or keep moving, sir?' Tommy asked the lieutenant.

'For now, that is above my pay grade, Gunny. Hold on and I'll check in with the colonel.'

'Yes, sir.' Tommy liked the fact that the new lieutenant wasn't trying to figure out everything himself, but he also hoped he didn't think he'd have to ask the colonel about everything. Giving the new guy the benefit of the doubt, Tommy thought the second lieutenant did okay going after Willingham the way he had. He must've either realized the air support was coming or was lucky as hell. It worked out all right for him in the end. If you thought that being on an excavated enemy teleport facility in space under heavy fire was lucky. Tommy wasn't sure his perspective was in the right place. After all, they had all volunteered to be there.

The Robots were hunkered down not too far from where the drop tubes had spat them and the Army tankheads. The tankheads had set up a reverse perimeter while the Robots pressed forward. At first it was just a jog in the park, but as soon as they crested the first hill in view of the outermost structures of the QMT pad, they were picked up by QM sensors and the automated ground-defense systems started plinking away at them. The automated snipers along the ridgeline had them pinned down. The mecha jocks kept making run after run on them, which was creating gaps in the autosniper's coverage, but they were having their troubles, too. They were under heavy AA fire while trying to take out the ant hills. Apparently the FM-12 squad trying to take out the AA couldn't because of some type of electronic warfare. The only way to knock out the AA cannons would be with laser guiding the missiles to them. And that meant that somebody on the ground had to get close enough to the damned things to light them up with a laser designator. A shame they couldn't just raze the rock from space. . . .

'All right, Zack, the mecha jocks and the tankheads are gonna focus on this section of the ridgeline here.' Colonel Roberts highlighted a piece of the ridge on a three-dimensional map projected into all their heads DTM. Though they were spread out behind the spoil piles across the valley and up the ridge, they could still have a fully interactive conference with visual aids via their AICs and DTM connections. 'That ought to knock out the autosnipers long enough to create a pass through this line. Take Gunny Suez and PFC Howser and bounce like hell across this AO to that ridgeline.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Zack, don't worry about shooting anything unless it gets in your way. Find a covered vantage point and start burning those AA cannons with the designator, got it?' Colonel Roberts ordered his new butter bar. Tommy hoped like hell that the new second lieutenant got it.

'Yes, Colonel. Got it. But from that angle I don't think we