John Ringo - East of the Sun, West of the Moon

The pikes, at that point, became a two-edged sword. They could be used to fend off the walls and redirect the floating soldiers. But as weapons they were less than useless. And they made handy handholds for the Blood Lords facing them. Generally, two Blood Lords would grab one of the pikes as the pikeman floated past and then use it to throw him at the far wall. Hard.

Herzer used a slightly different technique. The pike wall was trying to form to stop him but he wasn’t about to give them time. He strode forward as fast as he could until he got to the line of rotating pikemen and then began swinging his mace upward .

When the padded mace hit the pikemen’s armor, and often crotch, it tended to knock them off the wall. And it didn’t displace him at all. As they floated upwards he sometimes turned the mace around and struck them with the pick in various vulnerable spots.

Before long the formation of pikemen were so many targets, floating out of control. At which point two of the Blood Lords strode over to the bolt thrower and started some target practice.

One of the safety divers drifted down and waved at Herzer, signaling that the engagement was at an end. Herzer had lost four Blood Lords to over twenty of the enemy, a fair exchange rate.

The rest of the team moved forward at that point and Herzer reconfigured them. The lead Blood Lords, who had engaged the enemy position, rotated back and the support team forward. The techs were behind with a small group of Blood Lords at the rear for security.

As they began moving again, Herzer considered the engagement. It wasn’t a realistic test in his opinion. Among other things, it assumed he had all six teams, including the pure Blood Lord team, at his disposal. He doubted that would be the case. But it was as good as it was going to get and it allowed everyone to show that they could move in the environment.

At the far end of the second cylinder was a notional engineering and computer task. The task was reprogramming one of the latitudinal thrusters and locking it out so that Reyes couldn’t get control. That involved both software changes and rerouting one of the control runs. While the computer techs got to work on the programming change the engineering techs started taking apart the junction box.

Herzer had the forward team move to the edge of the cylinder with the backup team on the side “over” the task area. With them “up” in that position they could watch for threats and respond from their position towards the threat axis.

When the computer techs were done and the engineers about half done, a group of divers approached. The divers simulated the scorpions in the engagement and were moving along the upper wall.

Since the task was on the starboard wall and the backup team on the port, the “scorpions” were intermediate to the two.

Herzer recalled half the forward team to move to interpose between the task and the scorps, then sent the “backup,” which had already engaged once, to carry the fight to the scorpions.

The divers were required to “crawl” along the wall and if they were moved off of it it was considered a kill. Nobody knew if scorps could figure out how to get back to the walls but it was assumed they couldn’t. However, it was expected they would be hard to knock off; they’d probably have magnetic clamps on all eight “feet.”

Captain Van Buskirk, who was with the forward team, bounded across the cylinder to join the team about to engage the scorps and then waved for the team to follow him.

First he bounded to the “down” wall of the cylinder, so the scorps were approaching from “overhead,” then up to confront them.

The divers maneuvered to the port side, trying to screen around him and get to the techs. Bus, however, was carrying a portable bolt thrower and engaged the scorps with it as the rest of the team spread out to the side.

The bolts were blunted but it was apparent that they were painful as they impacted in the divers’ sides. Three of the divers, there were about a dozen, turned to the side and, jinking to avoid the bolts, charged Van Buskirk.

As they approached, Bus dropped the bolt thrower, which drifted away behind him, and pulled out his mace. He swung it at the end of its tether and got up a good turn of speed so that when the first diver got to him and he swung at the diver the guy, prudently, backed off. The mace, padded as it was, was still not something you wanted hitting a face mask.

One of the safety divers swam down and waved at the small engagement, indicating that two of the scorps had been disabled and that Captain Van Buskirk had driven off the third. It was better than having a serious injury underwater.

The rest of the Blood Lords had gotten in front of the “scorpions” in the meantime and were engaging them. The rules were that if a hand or a small throwing line got on an unarmored portion, the Blood Lord was considered a kill. The Blood Lords, though, didn’t intend to get hit. They spun their maces overhand, the opposite of their captain, and pounded at the divers as they approached.

Again, the divers backed off. However, as a mace rebounded, one of the divers swam forward and grabbed it.

Herzer could imagine the grin on the Blood Lord’s face. It was Ferdous from his suit markings and Ferdous wasn’t much of a thinker. But this didn’t require much thought. He just lifted up, sharply, and the diver flew up into the water. With a flick of the tether the hold was broken and the diver was “out” of the engagement.

The throwing lines were short, extending no more than a meter from the divers’ hands, and those weren’t getting them anywhere. In the meantime, Captain Van Buskirk had bounded to the “bottom” and back “up,” landing behind the “scorpions.” As soon as he was in position, and the divers hadn’t left any security behind, he began carefully potting them in the butt with the bolt thrower.

The first diver to get hit spun around in surprise and was immediately hammered by two maces from two different Blood Lords. A solid hit was considered a kill and the diver was out.

Slowly, attacked from the front and behind, the divers were winnowed down and eliminated. However, another Blood Lord was lost in the process.

The tech team had completed their portion of the test in the required time and Herzer waved at the safety divers, calling a halt to the engagement.

Their erstwhile “scorpion” enemies descended on the team, taking them in tow and dragging them back to the ladders. In no more than ten minutes, everyone was back above the surface.

“The bottom time was good,” the head safety diver said, removing his hood and glancing at his watch. “We didn’t have to decompress, anyway.”

“I think the whole thing went well,” Bus said, grinning.

“I also think it was too easy,” Herzer said cautiously. “But everyone performed well. We’ll just have to see what happens on the mission. However, that’s the end of the heavy training,” he continued, looking around at the suit-clad group. “Get the gear off, grab a beer; we’re done for the day.”

“I can live with that,” Linda said, smiling.

“Half days for the next three,” Herzer continued. “Get some rest and your heads together in the afternoon and evening. We’ll have a get-together next Tuesday. The day after is hangover recovery. Then it’s time to get the mission face on.”

Herzer hadn’t dialed back much during the half days; there were too many reports to work on. He wasn’t sure how many people were cleared for the mission, but he had sixteen separate reports he had to forward on training and mission status. Colonel Torill had sent over a major from SpecOps to handle the administrative load, but Herzer still had to check the reports and annotate them where he found problems, then sign off on them. Just reading them all was a chore, but he’d found enough mistakes he felt it was necessary. Getting the mistakes reduced took up more time, then there were requisitions for equipment to be signed off on, personnel actions including some disciplinary problems with the Blood Lords — nothing major just young guys stuck in a shitty situation and blowing off steam. He’d entirely neglected training of his junior officers, dumping it on Van Buskirk who was, fortunately, very good at bringing along a young officer.