CHAPTER 24


   Officially, they called Gordo Lewis an infantryman. In the minds of those who  knew what the word infantry meant, to them it was a guy on the ground, carrying a rifle, and digging a hole. To Gordo it was something entirely different. His world revolved around constantly handling huge chunks of carefully machined metal, cleaning them, and then putting them back into an even bigger hunk of metal, only to repeat the process, all over, the next day. Like owning a pet, you could never miss a feeding. One had to care and feed an armored vehicle, constantly, because having it running, just okay, was never enough. Gordo's M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle had to be functioning better than new and at all times. Anything else was unacceptable because, when you forget to feed a pet then it dies, if you forget to feed your Bradley then you do.
Since Gordo had spent most of his time working at a range that did nothing but train others on how to care for this vehicle, doing the work was second nature to him. The problem was that Gordon was used to being surround by other guys that also knew what they were doing. He had come to Feyland with a lot of those guys but, they were not enough to do the job they found here. Then some of them got killed. Their replacements were mostly airborne guys who still thought the Bradley was a tank and resented even being around it, let alone having to ride in it. A lot of them were not even what Gordo would call airborne, but rather, chairborne. They were clerks from 18th Airborne's forward headquarters at NIKA. The biggest weapon that most of them had ever handled was a thumb drive.
Then they had a group of replacements that were impossible to teach anything to, mainly because none of them spoke English. They were all volunteers from the NATO and UN observation groups. Most of them couldn't even talk to each other, let alone the guys that had to lead them in combat. Gordo could not even tell if these guys were officers or enlisted, let alone what their real jobs were supposed to be. They came with their own field gear and while that might sound good, on the surface, this included their own weapons. That was not so good since nobody in this universe had any more ammo to give them once they had expended what was on their persons.
These 'internationals' also had a problem with the food they had to eat. The standard army ration, the Meals Ready to Eat, offended some of them while it disgusted others. A Scottish guy, complete with a kilt and everything, approached Gordo about his packet number one, the infamous dehydrated pork patty. Because the man was from a country that allegedly spoke English, Gordo had figured he might could talk with this guy. The reality was that Gordo barely understood one word in three and all he got from the complaints about the meal was the word, “crap.” Gordo smiled and nodded as he replied, “yes, crap.”  
At least their reaction to the food showed that these foreigners from Earth  had some smarts. All of them, like the chairborne volunteers, were only serving as dismounts. They only had to jump out of the back of the Bradley when the ramp dropped. Gordo's world was in the turret where he operated the vehicles weapons. The twenty-five millimeter chain gun was proving to be their ace in the hole against the Orc. It had the range and penetration needed to bring those things down. It also had a rate of fire that could match a whole war party of monsters. The problem was, just like with the odd caliber weapons used by the internationals, they didn't have the ammo supply they needed.
Fortunately the vehicles, that Gordo's people had, came from Coven Hill's motor pools. They were in top condition and carried a full combat load. NIKA also had a small cache of rounds that could sustain them temporarily. Unfortunately, when all of that was gone, there was not going to be anymore until someone could get the Dell open again. Gordo had complained, like every other sergeant in the ad hoc battalion, but what could the officers do? Someone had suggested hitting up the elves but, their ammo was substandard and their industry was simply not capable of producing anything as sophisticated as the two types of rounds used in a Bushmaster.
If the elves had substandard ammunition then, from what Gordo was seeing, it matched their armored forces as well. They didn't have anything approaching what you might call a tank. Apparently, they had never felt the need for one. Most of the vehicles they rolled down their sorry excuse for roads where of the six wheeled variety, with plate armor that could barely stop a small arms round, and with weapon systems that were not really good enough to stop an Orc. It made Gordo wonder what in the hell they were built to fight because they were definitely inadequate for the one they had on their hands. That was why Gordo was not really surprised by the op order that came down, not even twenty-four hours after a big column of elves rolled by, heading balls to the wall towards Kalean-Erc.
First Sergeant Jack Sun, almost uniformly called Snake by those that knew the guy, showed up next to Gordo's Bradley. He was actually smiling but, the guy always did that and no one ever mistook it for him being happy. His expression was a terminal statement on life that spelled out, “eat shit and die.” He waited for Gordo to climb down off the engine cover and then asked in his normal fashion, “where's that fucking Lieutenant of yours?”
Gordo looked around and then shrugged, “taking a piss, I think.”
“Thought he saved all that for his pants,” Snake mumbled and then said, “good. You tell him to rally in one hour. We'll take a two by two cover formation and your platoon will be in the number three position.”
Gordo translated the military terminology in his head. It was actually as simple as it could be. They were forming a box that gave them three hundred and sixty degrees of fire. Of course, he saw the problem with this. He looked around at the trees, swamps, and fields that made up this part of Feyland. As usual, this serene location was like the rest of it. You could find all of those features in close proximity to each other. It was far from the kind of terrain you wanted to employ armor, even light armor, and it had left most of their road marches being conducted in very vulnerable columns along narrow roads that barely deserved the name.
That left Gordo shrugging again, “in this shit?”
Another soldier had walked up during the conversation and, it was hard to see who it was. It never seemed to get light enough here to be able to make out fine details. Gordo had been told it was simply the time of year and that during other cycles they had real daylight but, you'd never prove that by him. In this case it did not allow him to notice the star on the guys uniform. Gordo did recognize the voice though, “Sergeant, if you got any suggestions about how to change the terrain to our liking, then I'm all ears.”
Gordo gupled and then replied, “General Isaacs, sir. I um...”
“Would you relax kid,” Bob told his Staff Sergeant. He then became a bit more humble as he said, “but I understand your complaint and believe me, I don't like it no more than you do. The fight is here though, so we make due.”
Like most First Sergeants, Snake was not really as in awe of a general officer like Gordo was. His tone reflected this as he asked, “I'm guessing things did not fair so well for our Fey friends.”
That actually drew a very sour laugh from Bob who then huffed and replied, “there's a half a division of elf armor that's burning between here and Kalean. To say they got their clocks cleaned would be an understatement.”
While Gordo made some less than flattering remarks about their allies, he saw something in Snake that he had never seen before. The guy actually looked nervous. Then he confirmed it when he said, “fuck the elves, I'm more worried about them egg laying mother fuckers. Why haven't they counter attacked and hit us yet?”
Bob replied with a hint of optimism in his voice, “and that's the twenty-four thousand dollar question, ain't it?”
Gordo was more confused by the optimism than anything else, “sir?”
“I don't know Sergeant,” Bob replied in a more subdued way, “my best guess is they don't have to counter attack to get what they want but, I find that interesting.”
Snake added, “that wouldn't be my word for it Bob.”
Bob offered at least a partial explanation for his thinking, “conservation of force.” He then yelled back over his shoulder without skipping a beat, “SCOTT!!”
Scott Reiner came running up out of nowhere and quickly reported, “we almost got it organized General. Having some trouble with the Internationals. I can't find anybody that speaks... hell, I don't even know what that guy from Togo speaks.”
Snake had to ask, “what the fuck is a Togo?”
Bob kind of ignored the question. He used it instead, even if it was meant to be rhetorical, “Snake, that's why the Lieutenant here is going to be running the dismounts on this op.”
Snake had the same tone when he asked his next question, “what Lieutenant?”
It was Scott who replied, “me. I got a field commission.” He did not sound all that happy about it as he nodded to Bob as the source of his sudden promotion. Then Scott said in a thankful tone, “and I forgot to say, fuck you for that sir.”
“You're welcome Lieutenant,” Bob replied as he went fishing for a small bottle in the pocket of his equipment vest. As he used his finger to dab some of it's liquid contents inside his mouth he mumbled at Snake, “and don't you start.”
Snake quickly looked away and hummed, then whistled, then replied, “don't know what you mean General.”
Gordo was starting to feel uncomfortable with this conversation and Bob noticed. It almost made him want to laugh. He even felt sorry for the kid, so, he did what he could for the guy by ordering them all into combat with an unearthly force of man devouring monsters. Some days you just couldn't win no matter what you did. Bob went back to his humvee where he found Captain Patterson looking even more nervous than Gordo Lewis had been. Her reasons were quite different and she had never acted all that happy about him stealing her from the cushy job she had at the US Embassy. The vehicle was parked on the side of the road, in the middle of what had to be the best armored force in an entire universe and, even so, Sharon looked like she was expecting an Orc to jump out from behind every bush.
When she saw that it was her boss walking up she lowered her weapon and breathed a sigh of relief before asking a simple question, “command post?”
Bob nodded in the affirmative and paused before getting in the passenger door. He watched as the Bradley's began spinning in place just before lurching forward, onto the road, and then taking up their formations. As simple as it was for those drivers to shift their transmissions into pivot steer, change, and then step on the gas pedal to move forward it was not so easy to get a battalions worth of vehicles to all move at the same time. In fact, it was nothing short of working a miracle. That went double when you had no GPS, radio's, computer networks, or wireless communications of any time.
If this had been back home, Bob would have launched this operation several hours earlier. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that if they were back home, he would have been doing an entirely different operation altogether. Just like what he had told Gordo about the terrain, he also had to constantly remind himself as well. They were not back home and they had to deal with the environment as it was. That meant doing some things the hard way and it also meant fighting the enemy using different rules. They had to learn new tricks here and, unfortunately, from what Bob was seeing, very few officers were. They were still bitching about all the things they were used too and no longer had. Bob had a hard time scolding anyone about it because he felt the same way but, they couldn't do that, not if they wanted to stop these things.
When Bob got back to his command post, an inflatable tent that he had borrowed from 18th Airborne, he found himself confronted with one of those things that was an add on as opposed to being a subtraction. Bob had a guest and it was clear that his hastily created, impromptu, staff had no idea how to treat the elf. Bob decided to act casual with the commander of the Noveus-Faeyu. It seemed as if Quintescau Ceascu responded to that better than most of his people. With Bob, he often acted as if he preferred it. That was why Bob took a few reports and issued a few mundane orders before even talking with the elf.
It was Quintescau who initiated the conversation and he seemed to fully appreciate a working, and busy field commander. He was quite polite and did not need an apology for being ignored for so long. He got right to business as well, “I have been studying your battle plan, General. I must say I am a bit confused.”
Bob stopped over the map board and remembered what Balfour had told him about the elves. It had sounded almost like a warning and, it certainly seemed to apply here. Bob answered the alien leader by saying, “let's hope the Orcs are too.”
“I thought,” the elf replied in his impeccable English, “that the objective of our operations in this sector was too clear the area's in and around Kalean-Erc. You look as if your main effort is the relief of RAF Merlin.”
Bob did not fully deny this but, he phrased his response by pointing out, “hopefully we're going to do both. Merlin isn't the main objective but, it is an objective. We got an entire battalion of paratroopers holding that base down which is, currently, useless to us unless we can clear those roads. That means the airborne is too.” That part of the conversation could have easily devolved into a political conversation and it was one that Bob was currently not willing to have. His opinions of the Camelonians were probably not popular with the elves.
Fortunately, Ceascu did not seem interested in it either. He began asking technical questions and while Bob thought he did not get it, at least some of his questions were the right ones. It was not that the man was stupid, Ceascu was anything but. Bob was not sure exactly how to describe it but, if he had to take a stab he would say the elves had their thinking so far in their boxes that it might as well be their heads up their asses. They were trying to fight this enemy like they always had, using forces designed to do something else entirely. They had been doing things the same way, for so long, that it appeared as if it never occurred to them that they had to do something else.
It had mostly been Ceascu's armor that got clobbered just south of Kalean-Erc. He was genuinely trying to figure out how to make sure that did not happen again but, of course, Bob suspected that had less to do with winning the war and more to do with his estimations of the aftermath. The elves were overly cautious and, quite often, unwilling to commit forces when they were really needed. The reason was usually the same. It was because they were afraid they would need those troops to fight each other, later. In this conversation, Bob discovered yet another revelation he had never considered before.
Ceascu explained his casualties and it was overly complicated. Some careful questions got him to explain even further, “that unit could not be deployed because it's twin was badly mauled the day before.”
Bob winced, “what's a twin? I mean, I know what a twin and... well.”
Ceascu understood the confusion, “the units are staffed by members of the same grouping, a family as you would call it. They will not accept taking the brunt of the casualties. It would leave them weak, for generations. As you know, our females do the same military service as males, far more than with you humans. That can lead to...”
“Understood,” Bob said raising his hands. It was one of those unspoken realities that humans and elves shared. If you have three men and a woman you can only have one baby. If you have three women and one male, you can have three children. It made men expendable and women worth their weight in gold. Civilization was a numbers game even if nobody wanted to admit it. Bob knew it and obviously the elves did too. It made Bob wonder so he put it on the table, “if you don't mind me asking, I mean, I don't get it. You guys don't have babies as fast as we do. If you're worried about population then why do your females fight?”
“Because General,” Ceascu seemed almost bitter as he replied, “we have no choice.”