A Hymn Before Battle

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Something painful was waiting beyond the veil that surrounded him and Michael O'Neal refused to face it. It waited with hungry mouths to devour him and he fled down endless brightly colored metal corridors ahead of it. Wherever he turned it was there and it called to him with a seductive voice. Michael, wake up. Lieutenant O'Neal, wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up. I'm sorry Sergeant, I can't get him to wake up. . . . All right. A sudden searing pain jerked him into wakefulness and was as quickly gone.

"What the hell was that?" he mumbled blearily.

"I applied direct pain stimulation to your nervous system," the AID answered nervously.

"Well, next time try shaking the suit or something, okay? That hurt like hell." He checked the time and shook his head. It would just have to do.

"Yes, sir."

He tried to rub his face and was balked by the suit. He almost popped the helmet and then thought better of it. The last time he had the helmet off the smell had hit him like a blowtorch. He could only imagine what it would be like after an hour in the hot Diess sun. He took a sip of liquid and Michelle substituted coffee. Unfortunately, it was the one thing the suits absolutely could not get right. It tasted like coffee-laced mud.

"Thanks," he muttered and sipped his mud; the caffeine was less strenuous to the system than the wake-ups would be. He did not want another hallucinatory experience right now. He stared around bemusedly at the scene of normal human activity. "You've been busy, Sergeant."

"Well, sir," said Sergeant Green with upraised palms, "that Froggie general is a real pistol. He just rolled in and organized. I can see now why his troops think he walks on water. He wants to see you ASAP, sir."

"Okay, get me up to date then rack out." Mike took another sip of mud and had Michelle replay all the sensor data since the battle at ten times speed. He was afraid he had missed stuff during his hallucinatory period. As the unit counters flickered on his screen he listened to Sergeant Green with half an ear.

"First and fourth are up helping the Krauts through to the MLR, sir. They're not having much difficulty, they're using some good deception techniques and the scouts are flanking them through the buildings and taking out the God Kings ahead of them as we go. We lost Creyton, though. I think the God Kings' targeting systems are learning about snipers. I told them to shoot and scoot since that.

"The Frogs are securing the boulevard as they move and the MLR is going to sortie and hold the last intersection. The German ACS unit inserted a company behind the Posleen in their sector, using the tu

He replayed some of the details at slower speed and confirmed a hunch. When he tagged the Posleen unit that had killed Specialist Creyton and ran it back, it was the Posleen battalion that just made it out of the nutcracker.

"Nice briefing," said Mike, following the movements of the particular battalion until all intelligence units lost contact with it.

"Thank you, sir," said Sergeant Green, pleased.

"Where'd you get that information?" Mike raised his eyebrow at his energy levels then nodded at the reason. He the noticed the engineers were still ministering to the sleepers, but they had also started a sleep rotation.

"Hey, I've been watching you for the last two days, sir. I told my AID to learn from yours and when I asked it for a briefing it told me most of it."

"Okay," said O'Neal with an unseen smile. "On to the French general."

"General Crenaus. Organized as hell, real friendly bastard but don't let his personality fool you, he's a pistol. And apparently Sergeant Duncan played you up to him real big. The general wondered that you had to sleep; he said he'd heard you were made of steel and rubber."

"Hah! Right now I feel like I'm made out of jello and that stuff you find between your toes." Mike finally popped his helmet and took a whiff. The stink of Posleen was noticeably faded. Sergeant Green noticed his expression.

"When the engineers showed the Frogs how to get water, the general put some of his troops to work washing the Posleen out to sea, sir. For a while there it was getting pretty whiff out of the suits," the NCO admitted.

"Formidablé."

"Huh? Sorry. Huh, sir?"

"Formidable."

"Yes, sir," the staff sergeant admitted. "That's General Crenaus in a word."

"And last but certainly not least, speaking of Sergeant Duncan?" Mike punched up Duncan's location and frowned.

"The Brits are just now reaching the Frog perimeter, sir. They're just going to be shuttled through to the MLR."

"And the American unit?" asked Mike, sca

"There ain't an American unit, sir," said the sergeant, somberly.

"What?"

"Williams is reporting scattered survivors, quite a few of them, and they apparently were putting up a hell of a fight, but it's a mishmash of platoon– and company-size units, none of them the original force. There are even a few senior officers, but they're in command of companies and platoons made up of clerks. It's really confused, sir."

"Bit of a dog's breakfast. Okay, I'll send in the rest of the squad in two-man teams to roust out as many of the survivors as possible. When they get back, we'll pull out."

"Roger that, sir."

"Hit the rack. What's the schedule on the rest?"

"Umm, when first and fourth get back, they take up the defense and third and fifth rest, sir"

"Right, get some sleep."

"Yes, sir." The NCO's speech was starting to slur. He slumped on the block the lieutenant had vacated and was instantly asleep.

Mike contacted second squad and told them they had thirty minutes to round up all the stragglers and get them moving back to the intersection. Then he went to find the "formidablé" French general.

He found him in the former German command post, talking to Corp on the panzer's transmitter. Mike stood aside as aides scurried in and out with reports and orders. Surrounded by the babble of a functioning command post he felt out of place in his smoke-stained battle armor. Despite the rigors of their combat most of the officers and men of the command post were well turned out in neat if not crisp fatigues. Next to them his armor seemed rather shabby.

Yeah, but they'd be nestling fodder by now if it wasn't for us.

The general looked up and fixed him with a glance, "Lieutenant O'Neal?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. Sergeant Green said you wanted to see me."

"We've reports that the Posleen are massing. What's the ETA on those other units."

"I told second squad thirty minutes then start falling back. As long after that as it takes, I suppose, sir." Mike's shrug went u

"And your estimate is?"

"One hour, total, sir. The American unit is shattered fragments. My men are going to have to go through with loudspeakers, effectively."

"Won't that make them a target?" interjected one French staff officer.

Mike flicked a switch and a hologram of a snarling panther's head was superimposed on the helmet. "One less Posleen more or less is what that'll mean, sir," he said.

General Crenaus laughed, "So, a product exactly as marketed! You are as fierce as your sergeant suggested, yes! Well, we need such in this hour! Come, let us talk." He gestured for Mike to precede him deeper into the building.

He stopped at a short distance from the command post. The area was near the deepest penetration of the Posleen in the panzer's sector. The walls were bullet pocked and torched, large holes blasted through them by 120mm ca