«Ten–twenty-two, ten–twenty-two, execute!» Stewart said in a steady voice as Private Simmons's data lead went blank. Half the team checked fire just long enough to reach into a side compartment and pull out a small ball. Flicking off the cover and thumbing the switch they set it offset to their right and went back to firing.

«Clear Ten–Alpha,» said the Alpha team leader as Bravo team duplicated the maneuver.

As Bravo resumed firing, the cratering charges emplaced by the Alpha team went off. They again checked fire only long enough to slither into the impromptu foxholes, then took the Posleen back under fire. «Clear Twenty-Two–Alpha,» called the team leader.

Moments later the entire platoon was under cover.

* * *

«So that's your playbook,» said Colonel Hanson.

«Yes, sir,» said O'Neal, watching Second platoon perform an advance under fire. The hasty defense presented by second squad was temporarily impregnable to the Posleen who were advancing on a narrow strip between a ridge and the Manada River, a much larger body of water than reality for the purposes of the exercise. «We've got about two hundred plays, so far, with the various levels of the company trained in their own actions under each play. It's more or less analogous to the bugle calls the cavalry used. In this case, the squads are performing a Ten–Twenty-Two, 'form hasty fighting positions and take cover.' Not that it will help them for long on this exercise.» He worked a bit of dip and spat it into a pocket in the biotic underlayer of the all-enveloping helmet. The saliva and tobacco products were rapidly ingested by the system like all wastes. To the underlayer it was all grist for the mill.

«Is this a fair test?» asked Colonel Hanson, noting how Second platoon was dissolving as inexorably as rock candy in hot water. He wished he could have a cigarette, but they were a bitch to smoke in the suits.

«I think so. By the time Nightingale noticed the flanking maneuver, it was nearly too late for Second to establish the optimum conditions, which was for the Posleen to be a hundred meters farther up river. There the chokepoint is only thirty meters wide, and Lieutenant Fallon could have held them indefinitely. As it is, I don't think they'll make it.»

«What would you do?»

«I'd probably try a charge, maybe with some psychological refinements, and try to push them back to the chokepoint,» said O'Neal. He swiveled his viewpoint down into the river for a moment then back to the fighting. «It's really not a time thing; the length of time they hold is moot. If the Posleen break through now or three hours from now they'll crack the company defense down the river.»

«Would it work?» asked Colonel Hanson, now paying much more attention to the briefer than the essentially finished engagement.

«According to the scenario, it will work on an irregular basis, dependent on a number of factors not available to adjustment by the tested,» O'Neal answered precisely. Whether any of it would work in the real world was the question in his mind. Every time he looked back at Diess he got cold chills. The chances he had taken were insane. Every single action had been long-ball odds and only incredible good luck had carried the platoon through. His own survival was still placed, by everyone, in the «miraculous» category. And he was afraid he'd used up not only his own quota of luck, but his company's. If these plans were wrong, it was going to be a massacre. And the fault would rest squarely on his shoulders.

He worked the dip around in thought and spat again. «The Posleen might have a wimpy God King, they might not have enough muscle to the front, minute factors of surface structure on the squad's armor affects penetration, and so forth. But if you're this far back you have to hammer them like the hinges of hell, and Lieutenant Fallon's not a hinges-of-hell kind of guy.»

«So the mistake on Lieutenant Nightingale's part was farther back?»

«Yes, sir,» Mike answered, in a distracted tone. Something about the scenario was playing false to his experienced senses.

«I almost always leave First platoon in reserve, which pisses the other two platoons off,» he continued automatically. «But Rogers always goes around with such a head full of steam, when I use him to reinforce or blitz it gets hammered home with a vengeance.»

The First platoon leader was a tall, broad, good-looking first lieutenant. As a first lieutenant he would normally have either a heavy weapons platoon or a staff position. Filling a slot for a second lieutenant was beginning to eat him alive; Mike had forwarded four requests for transfer in the last six months.

«Nightingale believes in distributing the load. I am trying to disabuse her of that. The only thing that matters is the mission. You have to pick your units on that basis, not on the basis of 'fair.' I finally decided that what she needed was more of a helping hand. But I'd backed myself into a corner being overcorrective.» He grimaced at admitting the mistake.

«Finally I took over most of the stuff the first sergeant had been handling for both of us and sicced him on her. They've been spending a hell of a lot of time together and she's starting to get the hang of it; Gunny Pappas is a top-notch trainer. But I'm still not totally comfortable with her tactical sense.»

«It takes time to learn that,» Hanson admitted.

«Yes, sir. And I hope we've got it.» Mike kicked up a probability graph of the engagement if it continued on the current course and fed it to the battalion commander. The casualty graph looked like a mountainside.

For Hanson, who came to his military maturity in the cauldron of Southeast Asia and the Army of the '70s, the Virtual Reality gear the unit trained with was the next best thing to science fiction.

He had been nearly seventy when recalled and although he had continued in business after the Army, he was one of those executives for whom computers were Greek. These systems, however, were as far from modern computers as a Ferrari from a chariot.

Taking his lead from the resident expert, he started calling his artificial intelligence device, a Galactic-supplied supercomputer the size of a pack of cigarettes, «Little Nag.» He now used her for all his official correspondence and, now that he had gotten her over the annoying literalness of a new AID, she was better than any secretary he'd ever had. In the regular exercises the battalion was conducting, Little Nag kept better track of friendly and enemy disposition, personnel and equipment levels, and all the other minutiae that made for a successful military operation, than any staff in history. The newly arrived S-3 and the other battalion staff officers were getting used to their own AIDs and the staff was approaching a level of perfection seldom to be dreamed.

There was a rapid shuffling below as second squad left their positions and the others moved to cover the extended front. The reduced fire pressure permitted the Posleen to begin moving slowly forward, piling up windrows of their dead but willing to take the sacrifice to overrun the position. However, what remained of second squad eeled past the other positions and, using a gully that kept them more or less out of Posleen sight, slipped one by one into the river and out of Virtual sight.

«Oh, God damn,» whispered Mike, cutting in an overlay of positions to track second as they moved up current. He smiled and spit into the vacuole again.

«What?» asked Colonel Hanson. «It looks like a forlorn hope to me.» He tapped a series of virtual controls to project the course of the unit. The leader, the Sergeant Stewart he had met his first day at the unit, had entered orders for his team and the group of eight survivors was headed for a point in the river opposite the narrow chokepoint the platoon had been unable to reach.

«Not necessarily, sir. Even with the few that remain, second squad could take and hold that chokepoint for a moment, given the right conditions. Maybe long enough for the rest of the platoon to charge forward and relieve them. Damn, I didn't think that by-the-book Long-Grey-Line son of a gun had it in him.»