Chapter 4

By the end of the pass, things were settling in pretty well. Ned learned that sleeping with two women was pretty pleasant -- even if one or both of them got up regularly to empty baby-constricted bladders. They apparently worked things out that first night, because Ellie didn't come to bed alone -- and while Ned could have been dictatorial about it, the idea of having two women was a novel one -- something that undoubtedly would NOT have been the case if Judy hadn't been getting in the way of just about anything related to sex. The other bed occupant was Margeaux -- both nights; the women seemed to feel that since she had the most interest, there was no issue with her having the most access. Ned found that he had little or no reason to complain.

Doing Margeaux first seemed to make sense, too; with Margeaux, it was more about the act and athleticism, which meant that sex with Dolores or Ellie was more intimate. Margeaux took the edge off Ned and watching or light participation warmed the other women up, so it just worked...

Judy stayed away from the bedroom -- on her own, not due to any requirement to do so from Ned. After that first night, Ned told his women that they could set whatever schedule made sense as long as there was someone there; if he decided he wanted someone in particular, he would alter things, but otherwise, the schedule was in their hands. Judy opted out, anyway.

SGT Baker was among the first to notice Ned's new condition. In the squad room, he looked up and remarked, "You don't look like a guy with woman trouble."

"Probably because I'm not, Sarge," Ned replied, grinning. "I finally took everybody's advice. Maybe things aren't totally smooth yet, but they're improving."

"So where's that noisy hen of yours?" Baker asked.

"I've still got her, for now -- but I trimmed her volume level and let her know she isn't in charge," Ned replied.

"Well, keep an eye on her -- and don't backslide -- and you'll probably be okay," Baker advised.

Ned nodded. "Say, Sarge -- are you getting laid two or three times a night?"

Baker grinned. "That will throttle back, Son. Enjoy it while you've got it. Oh, it doesn't have to -- but you'll probably decide that you need a little energy for other things, eventually." He cocked his head. "Aren't that pair you got from Marco pregnant?"

"Yeah." Ned grinned. "It isn't stopping them. Hell, the one that's about to drop is an absolute nympho!"

"Well, when she DOES drop, she'll shut down for a while," Baker predicted. "Motherhood will take precedence."

"That won't kill me," Ned grunted. Baker laughed.

The S-2 was seriously concerned over the 'buzz saw laser on a stick'. "We don't want the dickheads using that thing," he insisted. "They don't even have to yell 'Duck!' -- they'll all be down and our people won't, and we'll lose troops! Any sighting of the damned thing needs to be dealt with in the most effective method that will discourage further use. Kill the dickhead holding it, cut the stick in half -- anything that makes it look dangerous and ineffective. I'm going to request that we discontinue use of the mine."

The company commanders weren't thrilled with that -- but the S-4 had a new toy. "We can probably replace it with this," he told them, putting up a 3-D visual. "We're calling it a 'beehive' round. It's not what you remember as a beehive round -- a tank round full of flechettes -- it's more like what artillerymen used to call ICM, or 'Improved Conventional Munitions' -- but it's delivered direct-fire, by a device that acts a lot like an RPG -7." He displayed the launcher -- which DID look a lot like the old Soviet Rocket Propelled Grenade, which had seen use just about everywhere in the second half of the last century and on into the early years of the current one. The Russians had had a knack for creating cheap, low-maintenance, and highly effective weaponry -- and the RPG-7 and the AK-47 Assault Rifle stood at the top of the heap. It seemed like both of them could be found anywhere there was any conflict more intense than a fistfight; therefore, everyone in the room recognized the basic shape.

"Okay, so what does it do?" CPT Mackay asked.

"You sight it in and tell it where you want it to go off," the S-4 related, "and when it gets there, it blankets a hundred meter circle with tiny bomblets the size of marbles. The dispersal pattern is perfect; it'll turn any dickhead in sector into hamburger. It's also effective against light armor and any buildings that aren't any too solidly constructed." The 3-D simulation displayed the round erupting in a perfect pattern of marble-sized bomblets that carpeted the surface.

"So it doesn't explode?" Mackay asked.

"No. The round is a delivery system designed to create the pattern," the S-4 confirmed. "That's the similarity to an artillery ICM round -- the bomblet dispersion."

"Except an ICM round uses a charge to disperse the bomblets, and they're bigger," Mackay pointed out.

"Bigger, yes -- more effective, no," The S-4 explained. "And then there's the little added feature ... We can deploy the Beehive directly over friendly troops -- the bomblets generate a repulsion field upon detection of the material in standard chameleon battledress uniforms and redeploy outward using it." The simulation showed the round detonating over friendly troops -- and dispersing its effect in a circle beyond them.

"That's cute -- but you'll get collateral damage," one of the other company commanders pointed out. "Splinters, flying debris..."

"True," the S-4 admitted. "But if the troops take cover, they'll be out of direct explosive effect and most ejected material from explosions on the perimeter. It's a lot safer than a 'danger close' mortar barrage. The charges are meant to decimate the target by turning it into Swiss Cheese, not by turning it into secondary projectiles."

"So who gets to field test this thing?" CPT Mackay asked.

"You do," the Battalion Commander replied.

"Me and my big mouth..."

Ned's squad trained with the weapon for a week in the 'local training area' - a gravitationally -- enhanced area on the far side of Truman. Nobody was anxious to conduct the 'danger close' test, but training dummies survived it handily. At point eight G -- the local gravity amplification available in the LTA -- the optimum dispersal point was about two and a half meters above the target; on Tulakat, which was closer to Earth-normal, they expected three meters to be optimum and trained to deploy Beehive RPGs at that height -- which wasn't difficult, since it was a simple adjustment made on the launcher before firing.

Things seemed to be pretty smooth at home; Ned went back to his pod every night to apparent harmony. Ellie and Judy were visibly changing daily, much to Ellie's pleasure -- and Judy's displeasure. Ellie's cellulite went away, and bulk shifted from her ass and belly to her chest, where it was a lot more pleasing to look at.

Judy, on the other hand ... Judy's modifications were deliberately functional and not aesthetic; her hips and pelvis were widened and her whole skeleton beefed up some to aid in pregnancy, and her low-slung titties were enlarged -- but no effort was made to make them fun to look at. They remained low-slung and even shifted to droopy as they sized up, with considerably up- sized nipples hanging off the tips. Changes in her internal plumbing made to support pregnancy led to glandular changes and an eruption of acne -- and Ned did nothing. Worst, though, was the libido increase; sex went from a tool used to manipulate Ned to something Judy needed increasingly -- while she became less and less appetizing to look at. Masturbation went from an occasional thing to take the edge off to a daily requirement -- then twice daily...

Stubbornly, stupidly, she held on until Ned deployed, and it was too late...

It was a Company-level deployment -- a sweep of as much territory as they could take and hold over a two-mile front. Leopard-class troop carriers had been transported to an offshore base in the southern hemisphere; the troops would board them and be flown nap-of-the-earth (well, Tulak) to the target location, and deployed. Dickhead air defense was considered murderous, but it was oriented to expect threats from orbit, not the 25 meter level -- and Leopard defensive shields tended to stop most conventional weapons for a few seconds, at least. The area had never suffered attack and was considered to be lightly defended -- but had some new construction of facilities considered key to Sa'arm expansion on the continent. At the end of the sweep, teams would transport out using portables they were carrying with them, regrouping at the underwater facility and transporting out to the moon base to catch their ride home to Truman.

That was the plan, at least.

It is a generally accepted dictum that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy -- and this engagement was no exception. The decision to fly at 250 meters above the deck until they were close to shore proved flawed; dickhead scans picked up the Leopards 100 kilometers out and, true to form, they applied heavier and heavier air defense weapons until something turned out to be effective -- in this case a tactical nuke that took out one squad of the weapons platoon, probably because it was the last to deploy. Things were better on the deck, of course, but once in contact the Leopards had worries from regular small-arms fire. CPT Mackay decided that it was unlikely that the Leopards would escape, so he redefined their mission, using them as mobile heavy-weapons platforms; the Leopards had an excellent counter-battery defensive capability and at low altitude they were difficult to detect and engage using antiaircraft weapons. Hovering in support of attacking troops, they were a combination Apache helicopter and hovering M-1 Abrams tank. The bad news was that at some point they ran out of fuel and/or armaments and had to be destroyed in place. Fortunately, they had fine self-destruct mechanisms and made a wonderful attractive nuisance; dickheads converging on the carrier for reconnaissance and salvage operations discovered this the hard way. Leopard crews were absorbed into the formations they'd been transporting and fought on.

The raid was largely successful, if abbreviated; all four platoons reached their individual objectives -- new facilities -- and obliterated them, while mopping up the local defenses and quick-response elements. In addition, they did their best to penetrate and at least damage local dickhead underground installations -- but the dickheads had some extremely sophisticated defenses for same, so the effectiveness of such attacks was difficult to assess. Basically, it seemed that Sa'arm underground warrens were walled with blast doors -- penetrate one set and you were faced with a new one. Electronic 'moles' -- remote-controlled antigrav platforms firing shaped charges and heavy lasers -- generally made it less than 100 meters into Sa'arm warrens before being cut off from behind and self-destructing.

Beehives turned out to be highly effective -- particularly in answer to the threat of a buzz saw. Ned himself used one on a buzz-saw wielder, timing things perfectly so that the thing never started but the Sa'arm element on the ground around the unit deploying it got carpet bombed and never really knew the difference.

Of course, a good, on-target laser pulse at the buzz saw or its support stick did just as well, generally.

The dickheads got a couple up, but effectiveness just wasn't impressive -- nowhere near as good as beehives or even conventional weapons in use by either side. Dickheads were just too slow and clumsy about the deployment and the thing basically required a unit to be upright while deploying it -- not a good thing in a combat situation. In fact, one major advantage human troops had over the Sa'arm was the ability to go prone and low-crawl instead of standing up like asparagus. The Sa'arm could go flat in extremity, but weren't built to operate that way. They relied upon visibility and numbers to get the job done on the surface; underground, it was posited that they operated somewhat horizontally, boring forward using their legs on what we would have considered the walls and ceilings of the tunnels. There was some evidence that aside from 'rooms' or 'collection areas', the underground structures really required no hallways, but that the Sa'arm used some technology to just bore their own routes to wherever they were going and close things behind them like a worm, if a suitable tunnel didn't exist. Of course, that wouldn't work too well while lugging large objects or in any number of situations requiring organization of any type...

The twenty-four hour deployment lasted eighteen; we kept pulling rabbits out of our hats, but the dickheads deployed more and more units until holding territory became infeasible without a supply train. Since we didn't want them to know that we could create one anywhere using the transporter network, it was time to bug out. We blanketed everything in sector around the platoon strong points with a rain of explosives -- something the new beehive RPGs and related devices did very well -- and transported out in a matter of seconds while their heads were down, leaving the usual explosive calling cards.