Then the Chinese troops were plunging down the slope into the crater, firing wildly at everything that moved.
And in another moment, Lucky was fighting for his life, a fight far wilder and far deadlier than any he’d ever dreamed of in the trash-strewn streets of New York.
THIRTEEN
17 OCTOBER 2067
C-3 Center, E-DARES Facility
Ice Station Zebra, Europa
1605 hours Zulu
Jeff Warhurst was linked in.
The use of virtual reality—coupled with powerful computers and competent AIs—was transforming the whole idea of warfare. Throughout all of history, any combat involving more than two people had been constrained by the so-called fog of war, that overriding confusion born by the fact that no battlefield commander could know exactly where all of his units were, what they were doing, or how they were reacting—to say nothing of the forces of the enemy.
He was using the Battlestorm: 3000 combat management software package designed by Sperry Rand Defense, together with a tacloc comm system that gathered data from thousands of separate channels, processed it, and fed it into his link display.
The display unfolded in the optical center of his brain, giving him a three-dimensional relief map of the battle area. Transponders inside individual suits provided status, position, and even intent. Scattered robot monitors, ralis, and drones gathered information on enemy deployments and movements. At low res, individual friendly troops and other assets were marked as moving blue dots, while the enemy was shown in red. At high res, each dot became a tiny animation of a space-suited Marine or enemy soldier, and the effect was that of hovering a few hundred meters above the battlefield, giving him a god’s-eye view of the conflict.
In his literal mind’s eye, he could reach out and touch any troop icon, and words and numbers would appear next to it in an overlay window, telling him who the man was, what his status was, what he was doing. Tap and rotate his wrist, and he could see what that Marine was seeing, through the camera mounted on the outside of his helmet. Tap twice, and he was in direct contact with that Marine, speaking over a private channel. In the real world, Jeff was lying on a reclining chair set up in the E-DARES facility, wearing a headset and thread mike with the channels handled by his AI. When he spoke, he was heard by the man or woman he needed to talk to; he was simultaneously hearing the chatter on several channels—Command 1, the platoon channels used by each of his platoon commanders, and the general channel used by all officers and NCOs—and he could eavesdrop on any channel at will.
Jeff was well aware of a terrible danger with this new technology, which had only been available for combat units within the past ten years or so and was still highly experimental. Knowledge was power, and it was embarrassingly easy to assume that he had so much information about the battlefield that he could micromanage the operation, taking control away from his platoon officers, section leaders, and NCOs and try to run everything himself. Battlefield management was both a science and an art, one that required a light touch and dependable, well-trained, and experienced subordinates.
He had to consciously relax and watch, cultivating patience, trusting his NCOs, especially, to rally the unit and get them back into the fight and not try to do everything himself. Even a relatively small action like this one was terribly complex, far more than any one man could comprehend or command by himself. If he hadn’t had Chesty Puller working in the simulation with him, handling the routine details and gently calling his attention to key developments as they unfolded, he never would have been able to keep track of what was happening.
“Move ahead,” he murmured, addressing Chesty. “Let me see the top of the rim. Pan view right, ten.”
His field of view zoomed in and swung right, making him feel like he was flying across the battlefield. There were six zidong tanke, he saw, one already knocked out by a shoulder-launched 5-cm missile, but the others maneuvering for good hull-down positions on the crest of the west rim. From there, they would be able to fire down into the crater floor, where the Marines were struggling to regroup after the devastating bombardment from space.
That bombardment had hurt them badly. Twelve Marines were dead, and another would die in minutes from the leak in her suit if someone didn’t get to her quickly. Jeff had already alerted the nearest Marine, who was trying to save Corporal Lissa Cartwright’s life with an emergency patch and sealer. One of the two bugs was destroyed, the other damaged, and two lobbers were smashed. Several surface storehouses had been riddled by splinters; they would have to check to see if the contents of those structures—food and some electronic components, mostly, plus the two Manta submarines—had been damaged.