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"Two hundred seventy-five meters to waypoint one," answered the AID.
"Increase rate of descent to five meters per second."
As the descent rate increased, the swirling lessened, the suit moving at approximately the rate of the current. He started stabilizing himself, fending himself away the next time he swung toward the wall.
"Michelle, adjust the winch to maintain a tension of ten pounds regardless of rate of descent, up rate of descent to ten meters per second."
"Lieutenant O'Neal, if you strike a serious obstacle at ten meters per second, it could cause serious damage. Regulation maximum uncontrolled movement is seven meters per second."
"Michelle, I wrote that spec, and it's a good spec, I like it. But there are times when you have to push the specifications a little. Let me put it this way, what was the maximum gravities sustained by a mobile survivor of the fuel-air explosion under Qualtren?"
"Private Slattery sustained sixty-five gravities for five microseconds and over twenty for three seconds," answered the AID.
"Then I think I can take hitting concrete at an itty-bitty thirty or forty feet per second," Mike answered with a smile.
"Nonetheless, his suit systems indicate some internal bleeding," protested the AID.
"Is he still functioning?"
"Barely."
" 'Nuff said."
Her silence was as good as a sniff of derision to Mike after so much time in the suit. He had amassed over three thousand hours before this little adventure and he, the suit and the AID were now a smoothly ru
As the waypoint loomed up through the haze he thumbed the manual winch control. The descent braked to a stop just as Michelle intoned "Ahhh, Mike?"
"Gotcha," he laughed. Again the lack of response was pointed. The braking maneuver immediately started him spi
He finally stopped the spin by the simple expedient of switching on his boot clamps, universal binders again, locking his feet onto the far wall, and studied the problem. He had to cross three meters of water with every bit of physics working against him. Wait, which way was gravity? Well, it was perpendicular to the direction of movement, so that was no help. He slowly paid out the line until he was perpendicular to the wall on which he stood facing into the current. He deliberately stopped thinking about gravity again, and stretched his arms as far as they would go. No way to reach, he was way too short. What to do, what to do?
Suit boots. Damn. He released his right boot, stepped a foot sideways and reclamped it. Then the left boot. Step. Clamp.
"Lieutenant O'Neal?" sounded a concerned Sergeant Green a few minutes later.
"Yeah?" Mike puffed.
"You okay, sir?"
"Yeah," Mike grunted, fighting the physics of the situation was like carrying a boulder up a hill and the suit almost made it worse; the pseudomusculature had never been designed to side step against current. My fault again. "I'm almost to the first waypoint," he gasped. "Get the first team ready."
"Yes, sir."
Now he was climbing up the side of the slippery tu
"No rest for the wicked," he rasped, sucking in oxygen and pulling himself up the wall. "Michelle, increase the O2 percentage, please, before I panic."
"Say again sir?"
"Nothing Sergeant," Mike said, fighting a desire to tear off the armor and get a really deep breath. Of water. The increased O2 level started to help the oxygen starvation. "I'm down. Recheck those binders and I'll clamp off on this end."
"Yes, sir."
"Send the next suck . . . ah, volunteer for the bound down first." Mike said as he clamped the end of the line to the ceiling. He let out a few feet of slack and then clamped his line to the wall, belaying himself into the tu
"Yes, sir," said Sergeant Green, with a chuckle. "I will tell you that you just made me fifty bucks. The betting was five to one that you wouldn't make it at all."
"Beg pardon. I designed these systems. I, at least, had total confidence in them." In a pig's eye. "It's just the last part that's hard."
"Ah, airborne, sir, whatever you say."
The rest of the move out of the zone of destruction was time consuming, but not dangerous. As the move progressed the line men discovered myriad techniques to overcome the flow. Notably, stopping before the occasional turn and walking through. After three more hours they reached a pump room four kilometers beyond Qualtren in the subbasement of another megascraper.
Ensuring that there were no Posleen in the area, Mike put the AIDs on guard and ordered the troops to get some rest. He, on the other hand, had to keep going. His problem was that although he had fifty some odd troops who, as soon as they got some rest, would be ready to murder anything with more that two legs, they were effectively weaponless. Their external weapons had been swept away in the explosion and only the few gu
Mike felt too drained to use the voice systems so he called up a virtual desktop. His first query reported the current overall battlefield. The schematic was far worse. There was now a second green line in contact with the Posleen mass. The primary defensive line the mobile units were supposed to hold the Posleen back from for twenty-four hours had been reached at twelve.
The mobile units, what was left of them, had been pushed to the sea and were encircled with their backs to it. Mike ran another query and watched as the perimeter withdrew, flickered and died. Eight hours. The same operational projection called for the primary defense line to break in eighteen to twenty-four.
Next he located the remainder of the 325th in reserve of the primary defensive line. The ACS unit had been the only mobile unit able to retreat fast enough to avoid being encircled. He did not bother to determine his new chain of command, he assumed that Major Pauley was no longer in command and that would make the new commander Major Norton. That was no improvement from his point of view. It looked on the map like the American unit had been grouped with, possibly under, the German unit.
The encircled perimeter of armor units consisted mainly of French, German and English units. The 17th Cav, farthest from the sea and with its right flank left vulnerable by the retreat of the 325th must have been rapidly eliminated. Shades of Little Bighorn. It didn't have to happen this way. The primary Posleen assault through the sector had been decisively crushed, literally, by the demolition of Qualtren and Qualtrev. With the reinforcement of the battalion, 7th Cav could have survived. If the oil had not detonated, shattering the battalion's morale and killing Colonel Youngman. It would have worked. . . . And it could work again, he thought. No weapons, but lots of explosives. We could break that encirclement. He started sketching out a battleplan.