Return to Camerein

by Rick Shelley

  “I don’t have any idea. The only thing I’m reasonably sure of is that our people will make some effort to retrieve us as soon as they know we need help, and as soon as they can. One way or another.”

  “But maybe not soon enough?”

  “There’s always that chance.”

  “It won’t take too many more fights like the ones we’ve had here before the lads run out of ammunition. We’re already dead short on RPGs. We’ve been too free with them.”

  “If there’s another fight and we make it through it, we’llstart collecting Feddie weapons and ammo, use that and bayonets. Or make bows and arrows if we have to.”

  “You want to know what I think? I think this is the one we’re not going to come back from. We’re in a bucket at the bottom of a deep well and the rope broke way up at the top.”

  Spencer didn’t answer immediately. After a moment, though, he said, “No one promised that we’d live forever.”

  The first two hours were quiet. Spencer woke Hopewell, then got ready to sleep. The lieutenant would wake Mitch Naughton after his two hours. One of those three men would always be awake.

  When he lay down, David found himself thinking about what Alfie had said earlier. He may have it right. This could be the one we don’t get home from. He felt no emotional response to that idea, to the possibility of death. We‘ll give a good accounting first, he promised himself.

  He felt a temptation to try the radio, to call on all the channels that a Commonwealth ship might be monitoring. They’re almost two days late. If they haven’t come by now, what chance is there that they’ll ever come? The hollow feeling in David’s stomach had nothing to do with hunger.

  Sleep proved elusive. David found himself recalling his home, his childhood home, and lost family—swept away in a flash flood while trying to rescue a neighbor’s child. Those memories were almost unreal, a fantasy to set against the harsh, perhaps lethal, reality of this jungle on Camerein. For more than half of his life now, “home” had been a Marine barracks or the troop bay of a CSF ship—generally HMS Victoria or HMS Avon. Now, it seemed certain that Avon had been lost. Victoria was overdue, or lost as well.

  His last conscious thought before sleep finally came was There won’t be anyone to cry for me.

  Corporal Nace Jeffries’ squad had one of the corners on the perimeter, where the line of the creek met the semicircle. Nace was right in the corner, with his men on eitherside of him. Almost in the creek, they had not been able to dig in very deeply because of seepage. But they had been able to dredge a few stones out of the creek and pile them up. A little mud smeared around made it look as if the rocks belonged where they were.

  Nace was not too concerned with the quality of their camouflage. Any attack, if one came, would likely come out along the arc, away from the water and the jungle tangle that bordered it, where men could move without hacking a path. The only way that an enemy could reach his fire team—without coming through the rest of the detachment or making a racket that could be heard a mile off—would be to wade down the creek. That was what Nace and his men gave most of their attention to.

  It wasn’t much of a stream, neither deep nor wide, but parts of the bed were diabolically slippery. Before digging in, the men of Nace’s fire team had gone out to plant listening devices and two mines. All four of them had managed to fall at least once.

  With half of the men on guard at all times, the squads took three-hour shifts. Two hours on and two off ended up giving no one any decent chance to rest. Four hours left the duty section with too much chance to slacken off and lose alertness. Nace had slept the first three hours. By the time his squad leader woke him, the camp was silent. No one was moving about. Even the normal forest noises seemed muted. Only the small sounds of water moving past a couple of feet away continued as usual, sounding slightly louder against the silence it flowed through.

  Nace’s rifle was propped between two rocks. He lay half on one side, his head just high enough to look over the low barricade. He was still tired, but he would remain awake, and alert enough to catch any movement or sound along the creek or close by on the other bank. He had already been on watch for nearly two hours. The nearest thing to an alarm had been when a family of mammals the size of house cats had come to drink from the stream. Nace had watched them, and they had watched back, taking turnsdrinking. Then they had withdrawn, cautious predators making almost no sound at all.

  After a yawn caught him by surprise, Nace rolled over onto his back and put himself through a series of stretches, trying to pump his mind back to full alertness. Then he rolled back into proper position, adjusting himself so that different parts of his body took the pressure. He lifted the faceplate of his helmet halfway so that he could rub at his eyes and cheeks. Then he pulled the visor back into place.

  Another hour and I can get back to sleep, he thought as he yawned again. If nothing happens.

  A third of that hour passed silently. Then one of the snoops that Nace’s fire team had planted sounded its alarm. There was no audible noise from the snoop, just a relay through helmet circuits to every officer and sergeant, followed by raw video feed from the snoop’s camera. That could be viewed—poorly—on a helmet’s head-up display or with better resolution on a mapboard. Nace’s squad also had their helmets set to register anything from the snoops that they had planted.

  Nace hissed to get the attention of his men, then pointed north, along the creek. The snoop that had twirped had been planted along the bank of the stream, just above water level, one hundred twenty yards out. Anything it saw almost had to be coming down the creek. Nace watched the images on his head-up display. At first, he saw nothing moving. But the camera was far more sensitive than the resolution available against Nace’s faceplate. It wasn’t until the figure moved that Nace spotted it—definitely human.

  For several minutes there was nothing else. The one figure did not move again. No others came into view. With radio silence in the Commonwealth camp, Nace and his men could not know that four other snoops around the perimeter had also picked up movement that did not belong. The entire detachment had been placed on alert immediately, the sleeping men wakened quietly.

  Nace concentrated on keeping his breathing shallow and regular. He watched the display on his visor for moremovement, or for the one figure to come into focus. How many are out there? he wondered. Do they know exactly where we are, or are they still looking? The latter seemed improbable. The man spotted by the snoop wouldn’t be holding so perfectly still for so long unless he had a very good idea that he was within range of an enemy. Maybe the Federation had detected the snoop’s transmission and were looking for it so they could destroy the telltale before moving again.

  Or maybe they’re just waiting for the rest of their men to get into position before they attack. Once more Nace asked himself How many? He knew how many of his mates remained, and he knew that ammunition was going to be a problem before long.

  He wiggled against the dirt under him, as if trying to burrow in, looking for any extra cover, even a tiny fraction of an inch. Tension built, and fear, but neither of those had ever paralyzed Nace Jeffries.

  Spencer was grateful for the delay, though he too wondered at the reason. There had been no way to get a reliable count of the number of enemy soldiers who were moving toward the camp. The snoops could only show that there were several groups. There were gaps in coverage. The detachment had not possessed enough of the bugs to give thorough coverage of an entire circle, not in the forest. David scanned the video feeds. Using his mapboard, its slight glow concealed by part of a tarp, he could see clearly all the men that the snoop cameras could see.

  “They obviously know where we are,” David whispered on a radio channel that connected him to Hopewell and the noncoms. “It’s just a matter of when they attack.” Anyone standing two feet from Spencer, without a helmet radio turned to the proper channel, would have heard nothing. The whisper, muffled by his helmet’s acoustic insulation, was far too soft.r />
  “Do we sit and wait, or try to catch them out by hitting first?” Alfie asked.

  “This time we wait. Save ammunition until we can do the most good.” Keeping his people closer together to offer maximum protection to the civilians limited David’s options as much as the finite reserves of ammunition. In almost any other operation, at least one squad would have been left outside the perimeter to patrol, or to be in position to hit any attacking force from behind. And David certainly would have preferred to strike at the enemy as soon as the snoops started to detect them, without giving them time to organize.

  I’d also like to have the entire regiment here, and a squadron or two of Spacehawks to soften the Feddies up. But wishing wouldn’t bring them. David idly fingered the safety on his rifle. It wouldn’t be long now. Twenty minutes had passed since the first alert.

  25

  If the 2nd Marine Commando’s camp had been a 180-degree protractor, Alfie Edwards would have been 45 degrees up from the left corner and Nace Jeffries’ fire team. Alfie’s first squad was dug in under the rotting trunk of a fallen tree. They had scooped out their slit trenches through the rot beneath. The tree had not been down long, despite the advanced state of decay. It could hardly have been down for more than a few days. The area close by had not yet become choked by new growth. A few quick-growing shoots were up, but the men still had relatively clear fire zones, limited only by the edge of the undergrowth bordering the creek to their left and the old-growth trees extending away from that barrier.

  Alfie no longer needed to rely on his mapboard or head-up display to see the approaching soldiers. Federation battledress did not provide the same level of thermal insulation that a Commonwealth field skin did. The enemy was eighty yards away and had stopped advancing several minutes before. Like so many others, Alfie wondered, What are they waiting for?

  Another two minutes passed before Alfie heard the first sounds of attack. The soft thump of rocket-propelled grenades being launched was followed by the sound of thosemissiles arcing through the forest canopy, ripping through leaves and snapping twigs. RPGs were not ideally suited for this sort of terrain. There were deflections and premature detonations. Still, at least a half dozen grenades exploded near or inside the Commonwealth perimeter.

  Even before the first grenades exploded, a scattering of return RPGs went out from the commandos. This was not the massive volley fire they had used to such overwhelming effect before, with grenadiers expending entire clips in a concerted barrage, but more deliberate, more economical, targeting concentrations of soldiers who were within range of snoops.

  Federation rifle fire started to come in from a number of areas around the semicircular portion of the perimeter. There was no enemy fire coming in from across the creek that formed the base. Alfie was too busy to notice the one quiet front. There was at least a platoon of soldiers working against his first squad’s section of the perimeter. Back near the center, though, Spencer had already noticed. For the present, it was just another fact to file away in case it might prove important later.

  It’s not like it was a clear message, David thought. There could be a number of reasons for the gap. It might be something as simple as the enemy making sure that they did not fire into their own men. Or they might be trying to tempt the Commonwealth force into a retreat in that direction, into an ambush.

  If we do have to move, I think we’ll go the opposite way. David smiled. One of his grandfather’s favorite clichés had come to mind, about not looking gift horses in the mouth. If it’s a Feddie horse, don’t look it in the mouth, move behind and kick it where it’ll hurt the most.

  He looked around, closer in. His headquarters squad was the only reserve he had. If worse came to worst, they would have to neglect the civilians and join in the fray. The civilians…. David looked at Prince George. The prince was down, like everyone else now, but if he was still not rational, there was no way to be sure that he would stay downon his own. Vepper Holford was almost on top of his master, and there were two Marines near enough to pile on as well if that became necessary.

  As long as none of the others go crackers at a bad time, David thought, I guess we can handle one man whose mind slipped on a banana.

  “Will, watch your flank,” David said on a channel direct to 2nd Platoon’s sergeant. “To the right, moving in.” David had just happened to spot the enemy squad squirming along the ground, looking almost like a truly gigantic snake.

  “I see them,” Will Cordamon replied. “Another ten feet and they’ll be where I want them. We’ve got a boomer planted, on command. I time it right, we should drop the whole squad. I told my lads to leave them be until then so we don’t spook them.”

  It was dangerous to ignore the rest of the perimeter, even for two minutes, but Spencer kept watching the crawling men, waiting for the surprise that 2nd Platoon had set. Ten feet. It was difficult for David to pinpoint the distance the enemy point man crawled. He started to steel himself against the explosion he knew was coming, but when the mine did go off, it was still a surprise. The glare of the blast overloaded his helmet’s night-vision systems with heat and light. The directional explosive had been placed high, hanging from the tree’s trunk, and it unloaded its seven hundred fifty fragments in a 45-degree arc, downward, on top of the enemy soldiers.

  “Looked good, Will,” David said as his vision returned. “You must have got most of them.” Then it was time to start watching the rest of the perimeter again.

  The enemy soldiers in the creek had not done any shooting. During the first minutes of the attack they had merely crouched in the water, near either bank of the stream. Nace was certain that there were at least two squads out there trying to be coy about revealing their presence. They might be a full platoon or more.

  They want us to get so caught up in the other stuff thatwe’ll forget all about them. Nace smiled. There was no chance of that. He had kept his fire team out of the fight and down, waiting. We’ll see who surprises who.

  He heard the mine explode on the far side of the perimeter. The noise was distinctive, deeper and louder than the sound of a grenade or the rockets the Marines carried. Somebody got a load in the britches, Nace thought. His men had a mine planted as well, out far enough that they would be out of the danger zone when Nace detonated it. It was hanging from a vine above the center of the creek, fifty yards from where Nace lay, thirty yards in front of the waiting soldiers. “A little hot rain in the rain forest,” he had joked when his men rigged the explosive charge.

  “Any movement down there?” Alfie asked a few minutes later. Even over the radio, his voice was the merest whisper.

  “Not yet, Sarge,” Nace replied. “They’re just squatting in the water—waiting, like us. Any idea yet what the total opposition might be?”

  “Looks like a full company, maybe more,” Alfie replied.

  Behind Nace, the tempo of the battle increased slowly, the volume of gunfire increasing and coming closer. But that was background, not his concern. Jeffries knew to focus on his own front and trust his mates to handle the other sides. If there was a breakthrough, he would be warned.

  Through the gunfire and the occasional blast of explosives, Nace became aware of a distant crackling sound. One of those explosions had started a fire. It wasn’t enough to cast light into Nace’s position, so he didn’t worry about that either.

  He adjusted his rifle and moved his head so that he was looking through the gun’s sights, linking them to his helmet’s night-vision systems. He could see five soldiers, three on the far side of the creek, two on the near, all standing in the water, crouched low, staring toward the Commonwealth line. Their faceplates reflected nothing, and he could see nothing of the faces behind them.

  How long are they going to wait? Nace wondered again.

  What would they do if I let off just one shot, took out the nearest man? But he would not do that without orders or overriding necessity. The time would come. He was certain of that.

  The fight had be
en going on for thirty minutes before the soldiers in the creek started to move. They came on slowly, almost crawling through the shallow water on hands and knees. As Nace watched, they appeared to be taking exaggerated pains to move without making noise, not the easiest of tasks in water that was almost knee-deep, over a slippery rock bed. Their progress was excruciatingly slow. They might make better time wading through marmalade, Nace thought. But more soldiers kept coming into his field of view as the five on point moved closer.

  “They’ve started,” he whispered over his fire team’s tactical channel. “Get ready for whatever.”

  No one replied. There was no need. Zol, Curls, and Igor were ready. Zol was the only one who had to move. He had been turned to watch the right, out in one of the gaps where dense undergrowth made it unlikely—but not impossible—for anyone to move silently.

  “Sarge, we’ve got at least a platoon moving down the creek toward us,” Nace reported. “Their point is about sixty yards out now, moving in slowly, not firing.”

  “Do what you can,” Edwards replied. “We’re a little busy around here too.”

  The squad’s other fire team adjusted position to add their weapons. Those men had been spread out over the next fifteen yards of the creek bank, but there was still no sign of any activity across the stream, just coming down it.

  “You got that banger ready?” Teece Muldon, the squad leader, asked.

  “Their point man’s ten yards from it,” Nace replied. “We’ll let the first squads move past and catch as many as we can.”

  “Don’t let the point get clear of the kill zone,” Teece said. “We want to get the ones who are closest to us.”

  Almost as the point man passed under the hanging mine, there was an increase in the volume of gunfire coming from all around the semicircular range of the Commonwealth perimeter. There were clearly new troops entering the fight for the first time, some farther off, others in the gaps that had remained quiet up to that time.