John Ringo: Eye of the Storm

But he did hop in the hole, trying to avoid the still incoming fire as much as anything, just in time to see one of the Hammers turned into a barbeque. Plasma was incredibly hot stuff and when it entered a suit, the interior turned into an oven. Julio hadn’t been around long enough to be present when such a suit was opened, but he’d seen pictures. Whoever the guy was, he was just deep baked and fried to a crisp. Besides having his head sheered off, of course.

Julio vomited into his helmet and dropped into a crouch. The suit, though, had been designed to handle that, designed in fact by the short figure up against the wall. The semi-biotic undergel created a pocket to catch the regurgitant, sealed it away to prevent aspiration and pumped air when Julio reactively inhaled. Half-noticed, a small quantity of undergel swept into his open mouth and cleaned it out. A half a morning of ACS transition training was concerned with just that. The soldiers were fed a hearty breakfast, suited up, given time to half digest, and then their suits fed them a nausea-inducing drug. Repeatedly.

It’s important, knowing deep in your bones that no matter what happens, the suit won’t let you drown in your own puke.

He was cut off from his own section, which was trying to open up a similar bunker about thirty yards away. And he sure as hell didn’t want to go out into that fire again. He wasn’t, in fact, sure what to do.

Mike knew he wasn’t in charge of one lost grunt but he also recognized the private from their earlier encounter. So he pinged the poor guy’s suit.

“First fight?” Mike asked.

“Yes, sir,” Julio said, choking.

“I’d say it gets better, but it really doesn’t,” Mike said. “But we need to get in that hole. One way to make it better is to think. How should we do that, Private Julio Garcia?”

Julio’s mind blanked. The general, survivor of countless similar encounters, the guy who had coined or been the inspiration for so many military jokes and aphorisms he was up there with Patton and a bunch of other guys, was asking Julio how to do it?

That actually broke him out of his panic. Hell, throw one of his own sayings back.

“Don’t use finesse when force works, sir,” Julio snapped back.

Mike grinned and did the head twitch that was all that was available when wearing a suit. The suits were form-fitting and the helmet was fully closed, presenting nothing more than a faceted plate to the enemy. Wearers got everything from external sensors; no faceplate created a vulnerability. By the same token, the suits, while somewhat flexible, could not nod or shrug. Body language was highly subtle and took years to learn. What Mike saw was a troop that had potential but needed to get with the program.

“X-wing option,” Mike snapped on the local circuit. “Double threes. Julio does a hop and pop entry.”

Chingadera, Julio thought. The bodyguards were going to drop two three hundred kilo dialed grenades in the tunnel and fire it up in an X at the same time. His job, whether he chose to accept it or not, was to run up the rubble and dive through the hole, hoping that the Hammers would check fire before they shot him in the back and that he could get into position before whatever Posleen were defending the tunnel.

He had to admit that the choice made sense. Urbers were generally shorter and smaller than the norm. The Hammers were mostly big guys. He could just fit better than they could. He probably could dive into the hole; ACS was not particularly cumbersome.

The other choice was the general. And Julio didn’t want to think about that possibility.

“On my mark,” the general continued, not bothering to ask if everyone understood their jobs. Getting a job in ACS required time in a regular Fleet Strike infantry unit and then a six month course. Julio knew what he was supposed to do. Doing it, though…

Sergeant Rawls designated one other Hammer to toss the second grenade then pinged readiness. At the general’s signal, they tossed the two grenades then the Hammers formed up on the rubble, leaping forward to get in the General’s way. Otherwise the nitwit was going to get himself in the way of plasma from Posleen and grenades.

There wasn’t any fire as they positioned themselves and fired up the hole but the wash of explosive carried a good bit of antimatter with it. Tough as ACS suits were, antimatter would degrade anything . The system automatically noted reduced effectiveness pretty much across the board; their suits had thinned on average three percent. The suits were going to have to go into the shop for a full detailing after this shit.

His suit kept him apprised of the actions of the line private as the guy scrambled up the rubble hill and then threw himself forward. Like well-oiled machines, the Hammers checked fire while the private was in mid-air so that he was following a crossing line of relativistic projectiles as he entered the hole.

The second set of grenades had dropped a portion of the ceiling, leaving large chunks of rubble all over the floor. So when Julio tried to roll to his feet, he stumbled and fell backwards instead. But in the light of his suit helmet he could see a door opening right by his left leg. So he kicked it.

The door was being opened mechanically. And it was heavily armored, sealed and designed to survive a nearby blast and still open even if there was rubble in the way. So the kick sent the suit spinning in a circle instead of kicking the door shut and left Julio with his hand at the base of the door.

That wasn’t much use against a Posleen God-King with a plasma gun. But Julio wasn’t quite willing to die, yet. So as the surprised Posleen tried to train the heavy duty launcher downwards, a shot that would have killed both the ACS suit and the God-King if it had gone off, Julio reached up and grabbed the barrel, pressing down and twisting.

The powerful suit crushed the plasma coils like paper. If the God-King had pulled the trigger it would have been very bad as the weapon exploded in the enclosed space. But the twist ripped the weapon out of the God-King’s hand, unfired.

That left Julio on his back looking up at an angry, disarmed, God-King. The Posleen’s next move was so automatic it could have been instinct as he reached over his back and drew his monomolecular boma blade to slash down at the armored human.

Julio’s action wasn’t nearly as smooth but it was much more effective. He just poked upwards, hard, with the plasma gun in his hand.

The butt of a Posleen plasma gun was designed to ride over the shoulder. Thus instead of the flat plate standard on human weapons, it was a curved shape with a not particularly sharp point.

“Not particularly sharp” is sharp enough when driven by pseudo-muscles that could send an armored fist through three inches of homogenous steel. The plasma gun punched up through the Posleen’s armored chest until only the barrel was exposed. The yellow blood of the centaur spattered down its still barrel, smoking off from residual heat as the boma blade clattered to the floor.

Julio didn’t stop to study the image. Training had fully taken over and he rolled to his feet, trained his grav gun down the tunnel and fired a stream of relativistic projectiles down it before he even started to identify targets.

Two more doors had opened, the God-Kings darting into the passage, weapons up. The first God-King, though, was still in the way and barely starting to slump as Julio rolled to his feet and they had a moment of hesitation about firing. If the body in the way had been a normal they couldn’t have hesitated, but killing a fellow God-King of the same clan and sept was another issue.