Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (38 page)

That meant that he was down a total of eight from his previous forty-one, leaving thirty-three effectives in the field. Thirty-three men and women who were by now experts in the use of enhancing armor and whose loss in combat would be even more shattering to morale and field effectiveness than the armor itself.

“Sir? The President is online and asking for you.”

Shit
. Eric scrubbed at his face a little more before giving it up as a lost cause. He straightened up, slicked his hair back so it looked halfway presentable, and left the bathroom. They were using an old mall on the outskirts of Detroit as their current base of operations, since the city itself was fundamentally uninhabitable at the moment.

All major centers of population had been slammed hard by the Drasin, but after the first few days their focus had moved inland from New York. Detroit and the surrounding areas got hit especially hard, so when the National Guard was overrun two weeks later, the President asked Eric to take his company in. They had to fight almost every step of the way but, now joined by a division of mechanized infantry and some serious SAM capability, they could hold their own against orbital bombardment and reinforcement.

That still left the Drasin infestation in Detroit, however, and Eric already knew it was going to be a bitch to clean out.

“Captain.”

“Mr. President,” he said, taking a seat in front of the computer display. “Good to hear from you, sir.”

“Likewise,” Connor said. “Have you had a chance to reconnoiter Detroit yet?”

“Yes sir,” Eric nodded. “Scouts, drones, and eyes on.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Not good.”

Not good was a polite way of telling the Commander in Chief that he was probably about to lose another American city and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

“Lay it on me, Captain.”

“The city is infested, sir. Preliminary estimates”—Eric shook his head—“hundreds of drones, maybe thousands. They’ve had the munchies, sir.”

“Damn. Can you clear them out?”

“Maybe. Depends on how much air support we can have, sir.”

The President glanced to one side for a moment, then looked back. “We’ve got plenty of planes and pilots, but conventional ordnance is coming up short. We’ve been dropping tons of munitions all across the planet, Captain. We’re tapped out of smart bombs, and we’re running low on unguided weapons as well. Captain . . .”

The President hesitated. “Eric . . . we can’t lose Detroit.”

Eric frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. We’ve lost three cities already, and Detroit is evacuated now. Sir, we can’t afford this fight.”

“Eric, we can’t afford
not
to fight this fight,” the President corrected him. “I suspect that you don’t follow economic stories, otherwise you’d know that we moved a hell of a lot of our defense industry into Detroit years ago. There are at least fifteen factories there, making arms,
munitions,
and even armor. We can’t lose that.”

Eric slumped in place, closing his eyes.

“Mr. President, I don’t think I have enough forces here to clear the city out,” he said honestly. “It would be suicide, and we’d still lose the city.”

“Maybe not,” Connor said. “We have a bird left over the area. It has a Kinetic Kill Array and is intact.”

Eric stiffened, eyes widening. “You have a Kilo Kilo
over
Confederation soil? Sir!”

The President held up a hand, forestalling Eric’s reaction as best he could.

“Wasn’t my call, Captain. This bird has been sitting there since the war. There was some concern that we’d lose and have to fight them here at home. The point is, we have it, and we can use it.”

“That’s not going to save your factories.”

“They’re mostly outside the city, largely untouched so far,” the President said. “I want you to secure the factories as best you can, then call in the strike. When it’s done, you and yours will have to clean up whatever survives. Do you understand my orders?”

Eric nodded. “Yes, Mr. President, I understand.”

“Good. God be with you, Captain.”

“God be with us all, Mr. President.”

“Alright, listen up,” Eric said as he stepped into the cleared area made by the circled tanks and armored vehicles. “We’ve got a mission from on high.”

“I hope you’re not talking about going down into
that,
” his second said, jerking his head in the direction of the city beyond the camp. Commander Granger, formerly an NYPD SWAT, had been drafted once New York was cleared out, along with most of his men. “Because the count estimate has gone up, I hope you know.”

“I know,” Eric nodded. “The President has some intel we didn’t, however, so here’s what’s on the line. The Detroit/Windsor area is one of the primary centers for defense
manufacturing in the Confederation. All the raw materials from northern Canada come through here, and this is where they put together the bombs that our air force and navy are running low on.”

Granger fell silent, closing his eyes, but didn’t raise another objection.

“So that’s the mission. We need to secure those factories, eliminate the horde tearing the city apart, and provide protection for workers until the National Guard can move in a couple divisions. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” someone called from the crowd. “Is the President nuts? For that matter, are you? We don’t have the numbers for this, Cap, you know that.”

“You’re right,” Eric said. “Which is why the President has dealt us an ace. We’ve been assigned a Kilo Kilo bird for the mission, and have full access to her load out.”

There was a silence following that, with a good chunk of his people not recognizing the term. Those who did were shocked quiet.

“Motherfucker!”

Most of them.

“Have something to say, Ron?” Eric asked, mildly amused, since Blake wasn’t saying anything that he hadn’t thought himself.

“No, son, I think I about covered it,” Blake told him dryly.

Eric just nodded. “For those of you who don’t know, a Kilo Kilo bird is a satellite loaded with high-velocity kinetic kill missiles. We’re going to use them to clear the road before we head into the city, and it won’t be pretty.”

“What about the factories?” Granger asked.

“Kilos are reasonably precise,” Eric told him. “We won’t touch the factories.”

Granger looked around, weary, but his face echoed the determination of those around him. “Alright, Cap. You’ve led us this far, I suppose we can go a little farther. As long as you’re killing those things, I’m with you.”

“Hear, hear!”

Eric nodded to all of them. “Then get some sleep. We strike at dawn.”

Amid the cheers, Eric headed back to the supply train. He quickly found who he was looking for, a mechanic assigned to his crew several weeks earlier.

“Charlie, you best prep her,” he said, climbing up into the back of the big truck.

“You sure, Cap’n?” the grease-covered man asked, looking over. “Not much ammo left.”

“I know. If things go well tomorrow, we’ll have ammo aplenty. If they don’t . . . well”—Eric shrugged—“we won’t be needing any.”

“Right you are, Cap’n,” Charlie Weeks said. “I’ll have the old girl ready for you.”

It would come as little news to anyone if Eric were to tell them that Detroit was a mess.

The city was one of those perennial boom and bust towns whose fortunes waxed and waned with world events, but most people only seemed to pay attention when it was on the waning side.

Now, though, the mess was from an external source and Eric was fixing to add to the poor benighted metropolis’ ill luck. He was standing on the turret of the lead tank in their column, eyes on the skyline of the city ahead, looking through
the combined enhancements of his armor HUD and the detailed data being gathered by their remote scouts.

What he saw in that augmented view was a city literally crawling with inhabitants, even though it had long since been emptied of human beings. Estimates had climbed since he’d spoken to the President, now standing well over ten thousand strong, and it was clear that the Drasin were making themselves well and truly at home in Motor City.

“Strike points calculated and entered, Captain.”

Eric nodded quietly, thinking about what was about to happen, but not having a choice.

“Release the safeties,” he ordered.

“Safeties clear. Kilo Kilo is active,” Siobhan told him. “Ready to release on your order.”

“So ordered. Let slip the dogs, Siobhan,” he said, “and rain down hell upon our enemies.”

“Kilos away.”

A kinetic kill device is nothing particularly special in terms of mechanism. In its simplest form, it is one of the oldest weapon systems known to mankind. The sling, wielded by every burgeoning culture in recorded history, was such a device. Whip a stone around a central pivot to build up speed, then loose it on a target. The lethal power of the weapon is determined entirely by the velocity you can reach and the mass of the stone you choose.