I Wanna Be in the Cavalry

I wanna horse in the volunteer force that's riding forth at dawn

North Bound on Joseph Cruz Avenue

Agana Heights Village, Guam County, State of the Marianas

Captain Jackson Ramirez, United States Army Guard-Reserve

Commanding Officer, G Troop, 26th Marianas Cavalry (Light, Jungle)

0015 Local Time, APR 11, 2037

The Light Cavalry Combat Vehicle, affectionately known as “Razorback,” lept forward down the darkened suburban roads. Its hybrid electric power pack—set to silent running—made nothing but a low whine. Specialist Foley was behind the wheel with his PSQ-42 Neons lowered, and the running lights blacked out. LICAV was based on the General Purpose Light Vehicle, which itself was a product-improved derivative of the Infantry Squad Vehicle. Despite its paltry Duracal—Aluminium metal-matrix composite—armor package, it packed a tremendous punch: a 30mm M357LF revolver cannon, a pair of ATGMs, and an M260 8.6x61mmP medium machine gun up top on the roof, with two 10.6x81mmP M274 Mobile Heavy Machine Guns on arm mounts for the two scouts in the back.

“Push it! Push it!” The Captain repeated over the radio. Troop G had lost about half of their vehicles when the 294th Infantry Brigade’s motorpool got hit. Pooh Bear had dropped three DF-26s and about half a dozen YJ-18s on the place. He had only ever seen so much twisted metal once before after the Battle of the Shatt al-Arab when Joint Corps South crushed the IRGC’s Third Corps and the First Gulf Coast Army in the same afternoon. That was just days before the nukes dropped, he thought as he looked at the crimson metal band on his wrist. He scanned the horizon with the Razorback’s infrared gunsight, linked to his nods, searching for enemy Airborne Loitering Tactical Munitions. He didn’t have much armor to see through, but he could see through it. And the EW Razorback—three cars back—would drop the music the second someone tried to acquire them.

It was a miracle that the baker’s dozen Murder Geeps had avoided being acquired. They had even bypassed the Percs, but Pass Without a Trace wouldn’t last—not where they were going. A battle of fates roiled the heavens with light and fire—flames licked up to the clouds, smoke belched into the night, and gunfire rang out without ceasing like applause and a hundred damned church bells.

The convoy hit Guam Highway Route 7 without running into anyone. They hung a hard left, tires screeching. They then gunned it down Route 7 until they hung a hard right onto Sitt Street. They gunned it again. “Drop the hammer! All Victors ready up!” The Captain barked over the net. The 500 bhp ACE-derived adiabatic opposed-piston engine roared to life. He flipped off the safety for the vehicle’s RIwP Super CROWS weapon station.

There were shapes ahead of them. Dozens. Hundreds. “Brake! Brake! Brake!” Ramirez flinched. His left arm jutted across his driver’s chest on pure reflex. The engine went quiet—its smart idle still active—for a moment as the Captain made eye contact. Eye contact. With a PLA major in the process of drinking some soup. Liquid poured down the man’s face and combat jacket. This wasn’t a whole other company. This was an entire battalion. At least. The other lead vehicles of Troop G pulled up alongside—their crews just as gobsmacked. The moment of calm was long enough for their engine to tick over.

He started blasting.

The Chi-Com field grade took a 30mm fused anti-drone round center mass. You could fit what was left of him into his MRE’s soup tin. The other gun trucks started firing, a torrent of steel and lead. Everything Ramirez looked at died; his command link was modeled after the Apache’s—and it killed just as well.

“Enemy Front!” Ramirez shouted, “Foley, fucking punch it! Everyone light it up!”

Specialist Foley floored it and ran over three of the Chi-Coms. The scouts opened fire with their heavy machine guns. It was chaos incarnate. People ran in every direction. More Razorbacks arrived, as some reversed, and others put the pedal to the metal in pursuit of their CO. The rockets and the buzzards screamed back with a wall lead. One LICAV ate a rocket and exploded. The cookoff was immediate and intense.

The Razorback flew forward toward the DOD High School’s football field. There were Chi-Coms everywhere. Ramirez didn’t care, and they drifted through tents and hooches. He let off a late-model Javelin, locked onto one of the fucking monstrous contraptions the Winnies had arrived in. The thing went up in a blue-green fireball.

Their right door gunner, Corporal Allen, went silent. He slumped forward and then tumbled out of the vehicle. “Fuck! Joe!” The other gunner, Sergeant Dunn, shouted. Another LICAV disappeared in a flash of flame as they Tokyo Drifted through the encampment. The Chi-Com resistance became overwhelming. A wall of tracers tore through two more vehicles.

“All Victors, proceed to Rally Point Burger Town. I say again, Disengage and push to Burger Town!” Ramirez ordered as he was pushed and pulled by inertia as Foley whipped the Razorback around like a hot hatchback. He took at least three rounds. His plate ate one, his helmet ate another, and another tore open his cheek.

The remaining vehicles withdrew from the school at full speed. He lost at least half of his force in about two minutes. He had no idea what had just happened, but he would take the rest of his company out and regroup with 1-294. They gunned it past the Governor’s Mansion. The PLA troops gave queer looks at them as they flew past. Ramirez saw a five-star Red flag fluttering over the mansion and started shooting at anything resembling a Perc. Seven OD-green Geeps came screaming down the roads in a discotheque of muzzle flashes. The remaining EW truck set its Super CROWS to automatic and started popping the swarm of Perc buzzards that came chasing after them.

They drove straight through a raging fire between a company of Can Openers and 1st Battalion, 294th Marianas Infantry. Ramirez put his last 30-mike-mike round right through the spine of one of the powered armor troopers as they sped past. He recognized one of the American officers, Clark Dominguez—they had gone to high school together—who looked on in disbelief as the convoy punched right through the frontline.

They wheeled into Rally Point Burger Town—located in a new development behind the Mayor’s office. They drove past three M357RA towed mounts, blazing into the night on automatic, cutting down the swarm of ALTM that had chased the troopers off the heights. “Whip the bitch next to those HEMTTs,” Ramirez ordered sternly, lazily pointing out three tabor’d prior-generation M1329 Common Tactical Trucks. Foley drifted the Razorback with one hand on the steering wheel. The agile tactical vehicle shrieked and spun, sending plumes of tire smoke into the air. Foley had been thrown into the brig once for street racing—thank God he knew how to drive cars and not just crash them. They saddled alongside the CTTs after two about one and a half 360s. Ramirez was unflapped. He made eye contact with the pimple-faced enlisted squatting at the rear of the vehicles. They were loggie cretins—thank God. “You motherfuckers have any 30-mike-mike HE-DP.” They took a full three seconds before the answered in the affirmative. “Good. Load her up.” He banged on the side of his LICAV.

He made eye contact with the blood that used to be inside Corporal Allen, now staining the rear seat and pooling down into the footwell. He growled something crude. He stepped out of the LICAV and removed his helmet. He had never sweat so much in his life, and he’d been nuked. He wondered how long he’d survived on here without his meds but realized he was getting ahead of himself.

“Oh,” he said to the loggies rustling up 30mm belts from their cornucopia of potential violence, “We’ll need red and black bellies for the MGs too.” One of the boys cracked open cans of belted 8.6mm and 10.6mm polymer cartridges. The rounds were all OD green polymer, but everyone still called them by their original color codes. More gremlins appeared to feed bullets to their still-smoking guns as the troopers drank water and treated their wounds. The gun-battle in the shopping center and the state government complex raged around them, tracers bouncing up into the night sky along the missile duel that continued to thunder across the heavens. The XO of 1-294 came charging forward out of the swirling mass of support personnel sheltering under the protection of the local battery of point defense cannons.

“Ramirez… Ramirez, you’re alive?” the Major grabbed the Captain by the shoulders. He was a tiny little pipsqueak of a man but still tough as nuts. His face was bandaged, and he was clearly hopped up on something medicinal. “Ramirez… I need your troop as soon as it’s ready.”

“Where’s Mark,” Ramirez asked, inquiring about the battalion’s CO.

“Dead,” the XO answered. Without skipping a beat, he continued, “I need your troop as soon as it is reloaded. It’s critical.”

Ramirez sighed. There was no dodging it. “What do you have for us?”

“We have three Chi-Com HMGs holed up in a structure on the other side of the shopping center. They’re plastering Bravo in the Courthouse. I need them silenced and the building taken.” Ramirez had a feeling what was coming next. “Ramirez, take your men and secure the Taco Bell.”

Ramirez returned a blank stare, giving nothing. He took a deep breath. It would be a good place as any to die, well, except maybe Saipan. Ramirez hated his hometown. He turned to his men, who were all looking at him for guidance. They would cross the Pelennor Field for him. He did not know what he would say to the spouses, parents, and children of those who could not look at him now. He gave a nod.

What is a noble death if not dying in defense of the Doritos Locos Taco?