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" . . . water-cooled Browning machine guns," said Corporal Wright. "I know, I know."
"You think I'm joking," he said, pulling out the jammed round and snarling at it. "This would never happen with a Browning. That's the problem, everybody wants more firepower."
The fighting position was on the second tier of the Wall, overlooking Highway 441. Clayton was out of sight around the edge of the mountain, but they had gotten warnings from the Black Mountain observation post that there was a Posleen swarm on the way up the road. So getting Gun Position B-146 back in operation was a priority.
The Wall was a mass of firing and observation ports. Beside the Gatling ports, there were regular heavy weapons, designed for engaging tenar, and rifle ports for the soldiers, whose main job was feeding the guns, to get in the occasional shot if they so desired. But, really, it was the Gatling guns, and the artillery hammering down from above, that did most of the damage.
The gun was mounted on an M27-G2 semi-fixed mount. On command, it would automatically move back and forth across a fixed azimuth, putting out a hail of bullets. The firing circuit was keyed in parallel with all the other guns in the B-14 zone, and at the press of a button, a button located in an armored command center, all twelve weapons would open up, each spitting out either 2000 or 4000 rounds per minute, depending on the setting, and filling the air with 7.62 rounds.
At least, that was the theory. The M134 was a fairly reliable system and the basic M27 mount design was older and more tried than Buckley. But tiny changes in design, necessary to convert both systems to a ground, universal availability, fixed, remotely controlled firing system instead of an aerial, regular availability, firing system, had led to tiny quirks, some of them related to the design, but most of them related to trying to integrate it. To manage those quirks, six soldiers, under Sergeant Buckley, were supposed to keep the guns mechanically functional and "fed" both between battles and during them.
In the case of Buckley's squad, instead of one soldier per two guns it seemed that they needed two soldiers per gun. Buckley, personally and publicly, blamed this on the units that they replaced; duties in the defense line rotated between the three divisions of the Corps and Buckley was convinced that the units that had the guns in the other divisions never pulled maintenance and/or actively sabotaged the guns.
The Wall unit, one of the three divisions in the corps, was on duty twenty-four hours per day for four weeks, living in rather squalid quarters within the Wall itself; then it was rotated to the rear. There it went through a maintenance and support cycle, living out of barracks and, in the event of a heavy attack, moving to tertiary defenses that were actually behind the corps headquarters. After four weeks in that status, the unit would rotate "forward" to the secondary defense positions, which meant it had to be "on call" for combat. Until recently that had meant sitting in the barracks reading girly magazines and getting into fights. However, since that engineer prick from headquarters had shown up it meant working on the trenches and bunkers twelve hours per day. After twelve hours of shovelling and filling sandbags you could barely make it to the club.
Buckley was morally positive that those bastards in the 103rd had sabotaged his guns. And now they were probably sucking down a cold one in the NCO club and laughing at him behind his back.
Everyone else in the squad, and in the company for that matter, privately blamed the situation on Buckley. Anyone who has a ship fall on them tends to get a bad luck reputation and that condition seemed to have spread to everything he touched. Whether it was an issued Humvee or the guns on the line or even his personal rifle, something odd and unusual always seemed to happen to it.
In this case it was Gun B-146, which absolutely refused to fire in any sort of reliable and continuous ma
"I think it's a short," Specialist Alejandro said, ramming a cleaning rod with a Breakfree-soaked swab down the number four barrel.
"We checked for a short," Buckley snarled. "The gun's drawing what it should and no more."
"I think it's the ammo," Wright said.
"We replaced the box," Buckley said, pointing to the huge case of belted 7.62 mounted under the gun. "And ran the ammo on 148; it ran fine."
"I think it's a ground fault coming off of the M27," Alejandro insisted, pulling out the cleaning rod. "The M27 is acting funky too."
"I think it's you, Sergeant," Wright said, rotating the gun manually.
"It's those fuckers from the 103rd," Buckley said. "They're fucking with all the guns. I tell you, they just want us to look bad."
"Well, that's not hard," Wright said quietly.
"What's that, Specialist?" Buckley said.
"Nothing, Sergeant," Wright answered. "It's functioning now, let's test it."
"Okay," Buckley said, stepping back. "Reset the breaker, Alejandro."
The specialist ensured the barrels were free of obstructions, took the tags off the breakers for the gun and the mount and threw them over. "We're hot."
"Safe off," Buckley said, plugging in a local controller. "Weapon is hot," he continued, rotating a round into the first chamber.
"Earplugs aren't in," Wright said hastily, reaching in his breast pocket.
"It's just a short burst," Buckley answered. "Here goes."
He set the gun to four thousand rpm, max speed, and pressed the fire button.
The rounds flew out with a ripping snarl like a chainsaw and the fire looked like nothing so much as an orange laser; every fifth round was a tracer and they were so close together they looked like one continuous stream.
Buckley nodded as the gun continued to fire and then frowned as it clanked to a halt with a shrill scream of disengaged torsion controller. "Shit." The brass cartridge that had caused the latest jam was clearly evident, "stovepiped" in the ejector. "Shit, shit, shit," he continued, reaching for the cartridge.
"Sarge, the gun's hot," Wright objected.
"Screw that," Buckley said, waving Alejandro away from the breakers. "I want to get this over with before . . ."
The two specialists never found out what it was he wanted to get it over with before because the problem was a short, but not in the gun or even in the M27 mount. The problem was in the resistor that controlled power flow to the M27.
The resistor coil stepped down the power that was supplied to all the guns so that the voltage going to the mounts was at the proper level. But in the case of Mount B-146, the resistor was slightly flawed, and it was permitting a higher charge through.
This charge had been "bleeding over" to the gun, and since the gun was driven by an electrical motor it was causing the motor to run at a slightly higher rpm than it was strictly designed for. But since the gun was on a controlled ground, the full power of the flawed resistor had never been released.
When Sergeant Buckley grabbed the brass, though, the power, having found a conduit, went to work. And he was suddenly hit by 220 volts of AC power.
Buckley stood in place, shaking for a moment, until all the breakers for the sector blew out.
"Damn," said Wright. "That's gotta hurt. You didn't have to blow him to hell to prove your point, Alejandro."
"I didn't," the specialist replied, pulling an injector of Hiberzine out of the first aid case. "Call the medics while I start the CPR. Tell 'em Buckley's having a bad day again."
* * *
"Come!"
Lieutenant Sunday walked into the company commander's office and came to the position of attention. "You asked to see me, ma'am?"
"You don't have to pop to attention every time you come in, Sunday," Slight said with a smile. "Bowing will suffice."