John Ringo - Eye of the Storm

“Contacting,” the Buckley said tonelessly. After the slew of despair the thing had spewed on first starting, he had asked how to turn down the emulation. Feldwebel Harz had tried to load a Rommel emulation he’d gotten off the net and crashed his so hard it had to be replaced. All it kept doing was repeating “ Who controls space? Who controls the air? Adoption compromise solutions must be adopted!”

So everyone had turned the emulations down, but the devices were still useful for communication.

“Ox, how are you?”

“Over-trained and undersexed,” Frederick replied, grinning. “You?”

“Much the same,” Hagai said. “Oh, I got transferred. To Florian Geyer.”

“The Panzerjaegers? Who hated you that much? They’re supposed to take on the Juggernauts !”

“Maccabeus was over-strength, Florian Geyer was under. It’s tough, though. They don’t observe kosher and… other stuff.”

“Wow, must suck,” Frederick said. In school the cooks had been careful to always have some kosher foods avaialable for the Jewish children. But even then the choices had been more scanty than those for the ‘regulars.’ “I’ve got a question for you.”

“Go.”

“Harz was quizzing me the other day,” Frederick said. “About the P-5297 and the M-3698.”

“Lifting platform and… a field generator?” Hagai said.

“Yes, I looked the M-3698 up later. It’s a field generator for ‘high energy conditions.’ But I don’t know what that means. And it’s all I could find. Harz asked me about them then told me to forget he’d asked.”

“The lifting platforms are usually used to move very heavy equipment around,” Hagai said. “Makes sense on a ship. The Kobolds are probably using them to rearrange equipment. The lifting platform also has a mass effect repellent system. That’s a system that will prevent serious falls. When it approaches a mass at high speed it reduces the velocity of the lifted system automatically. It’s a safety device, basically, but they were used a couple of times in the War for aerial resupply. They drop at normal terminal velocity then slow a couple of feet off the ground and drop under reduced gravity. No real deceleration effect so you can drop about anything. I don’t know much about the M-3698. It uses a set of energy fields to shield equipment or personnel in high-energy situations. Like if they know there’s going to be a nuclear detonation. It won’t stop the full power of one, but it will shield from secondary effects. Works on all forms of matter and most particles but once activated it only lasts for about thirty minutes. They were developed during the War but rarely used. All I can remember.”

“You’re a wonder, Jaeger,” Frederick said. “Don’t let the Juggernauts eat you.”

“Well, we’re supposed to be seconded to other units,” Hagai said. “So maybe we’ll see each other. It’s late, Ox, I’m going to get some sleep.”

“You’re an old soldier already, Jaeger.”

“Generalmajor, there are problems.”

Oberst Werner Wehling was the Staff 2 (Personnel) for the Vaterland. Like most of the High Command he was a rejuv, dating back to WWII. His specialty, even then, was personnel and he’d held similar positions during the Posleen War.

“Define,” Muehlenkampf said.

“Two in nature,” Wehling said. “The first is that there are increasing personnel interaction difficulties. The Feldgendarmerie have been forced to break up and more and more fights. This is leading to inter-unit difficulties in some compartments. The second relates to queries on the ship’s net about the P-5297s and the M-3698s.”

“Apparently someone in logistics has been flapping their lips,” Muehlenkampf said, nodding. “This is not unexpected. 1A.”

“Generalmajor?” Oberst Dotzauer said. Dotzauer had commanded a brigade during the Posleen War but his true love was operations, defined in the German staff structure as Group 1 (A) just as Personnel was Group 2.

“What is the status of training?”

“There is, unfortunately, little training that can be done on the ship,” Dotzauer said, shrugging. “We have no simulators so the major faults left on the enlisted side are difficult to rectify. Maintenance, for obvious reasons, is being handled by the Indowy. So there is no training to be done there. Most of the training that is scheduled is repetitive. There are benefits to repetition, but these are relatively simple tasks.”

“Two, send a general order to all ships the next time we drop out of warp for navigational alignment,” Muehlenkampf said. “Hiberzine is to be administered to all personnel below the level of battalion command and staff. All officers and all enlisted. Spread it as a life-support saving measure. We will bring them out when we are closer to the objective.”

“This will exhaust most of our stock of Hiberzine, Colonel.”

“I am aware of that, Hauptmann,” Colonel Isabel De Gaullejac said.

Isabel De Gaullejac had been a hardcore French socialist liberal, and there were no more hardcore socialist liberals on Earth, even after the Posleen had landed on Earth. There was no benefit, she felt, to soldiers and there was no way that an extraterrestrial race could possibly be as violent as they were portrayed. It was simply a plot to advance the military-industrial complex and she would not let her sons be squandered to make profits for the corporations.

She had held that unshaken belief right up until the retreat from Paris. But nearly dying from starvation, not to mention nearly feeding the Posleen, had broken her disbelief. At which point she became just as fanatical in the reverse. A trained doctor, she now commanded the SS medical corps and if she had any qualms about that remaining from her younger and more naïve days they never surfaced.

“But the order is valid and will be obeyed,” the Colonel said. “Circulate the order to all medical personnel. Put in a priority request to be resupplied with Hiberzine if we pass any inhabited planet. It is too useful a drug to not have in our inventory. We are going to need it.”

Frederick watched the coprsmen approach unhappily. As each of the troopers in the compartment were given their injections they relaxed so much as to appear dead and their faces flushed. With tongues bulging out slightly and their eyes open they looked not so much dead but as if they were sleeping nosferatu, the original vampire legend of the living dead.

“One little shot and you’ll wake up refreshed and ready for battle,” the corpsman repeated as he gave Aderholder his shot. They were saying that with everyone, as if that was going to make people feel better.

“Just go ahead,” Frederick said, cutting off the mantra. “I’m not afraid.”

“That makes you unique in this ship in my experience,” the medic said.

But Frederick didn’t hear as his body settled into stillness.

“Damn, those are pretty things,” Adams said, watching the video.

They weren’t sure where the file had come from, just that the Himmit had obtained it. It was Hedren plasma mortars, which were going to be one of their major bugaboos. The mortars had at least the range of the 120s and there were bound to be mortar to mortar counter-battery duels.

The rounds were green fire drifting across the firmament. Despite it being broad daylight they could be tracked by eye, seemingly moving in slow motion. Then they dropped and dropped finally bursting in a hemisphere of green fire that torched everything in its zone. The vegetation, which had a faint purple sheen like that of Barwhon, burst into fire in a circle beyond the explosion.