by Rick Shelley
It’s been a long time since I killed a man, or tried to, Shadda thought as he put a Federation soldier in the rifle’s sights.
If the man had been more than thirty yards away, he would have been safe. Shadda’s stomach had been tied in knots for hours, as it habitually was, and that also disturbed his aim. But after Shadda saw his target fall, the knot released, suddenly. He barely managed to get his head away from the rifle before he started vomiting. He had forgotten. His reaction had been the same the last time he had aimed a weapon at a human being.
An eerie silence came to the battlefield. The nearest Federation troops pulled back a little and went to ground, seeking whatever cover they could find or improvise. Around the perimeter, the Commonwealth Marines ceased firing as soon as they lost targets, often as soon as they saw that the enemy was withdrawing. So did the handful of civilians with rifles. Spencer started contacting people, looking for whatever they could tell him about the suddenly halted attack, their losses, and their remaining supplies of ammunition.
The news was not good on any count. There were only twenty-three Marines left in the perimeter and able to fight. If it hadn’t been for scavenging ammunition from fallen comrades, they wouldn’t have had any left. As it was, the average remaining was little more than a single magazine, twenty-five rounds for the slug throwers, one hundred needles for those weapons.
David had no choice but to send the headquarters squad to reinforce the most vulnerable sections of the perimeter, keeping only one man back to stay with Prince George and Vepper Holford.
The men from headquarters squad were still moving toward their new positions when the enemy started shooting, and moving, again.
Every man in the fire team had been wounded, two of them more than once, but all four were still on the line. Nace Jeffries had come up with his own plan for conserving ammunition. The men in his fire team took turns shooting, two at a time, and they were firing single shots. “Unless they’re crawling in on top of us, I don’t want any more than that” was the way Nace had put it. The attack down the creek had slowed. Nace’s estimate was that there had to be at least forty dead Federation soldiers in the water. Loaded down with combat kit, the bodies could not float. Finally, they did virtually dam the stream some twenty-five or thirty yards out from Nace’s position.
Thank God it’s dark, Nace thought. I don’t want to see all of that blood flowing past.
“Maybe we ought to let a few of the bastards crawl right in with us,” Igor Vilnuf said during the brief hiatus in fighting. “Let them get close enough for us to grab their rifles and ammo. I’m getting awfully near the end here.”
For an insane instant, Nace was tempted by the idea. “No, that would mean trading our lives for a few bullets. Even two Feddies could take us all out before they got close. We just have to make every bullet count. One bullet, one Feddie. After that, it’s bayonets and knees.”
And then they were coming again.
Alfie Edwards had been working hard to meet the “one bullet, one Feddie” goal for some time. His first squad had already been cut in half meeting one of the heavier concentrations of Federation troops. Four men were trying to cover a section of front that had been too large for eight, and they were all low on ammunition. There wasn’t a single grenade left in the platoon—in the entire detachment, asfar as Alfie had been able to determine—and the last shoulder-operated missiles had been expended within the last few minutes. The SAMs were not intended as antipersonnel weapons, but that did not stop the Marines from using them that way.
The mess of dead enemy soldiers out front seemed scant measure for the losses inside the lines. There seemed to be no end to the enemy, and no lack of will. They kept coming. If there were fewer of them now, and if they came on more slowly, the balance was still in their favor, more than before, because there were also fewer Commonwealth commandos, with much less ammunition.
Alfie was caught by surprise by another pause in the assault. The few who could withdraw did. From a distance, there was light rifle fire, but just a scattering, enough to make men remember to keep their heads down.
“David, lad, we’ve about had it,” Alfie said on his private link. In these straits there wasn’t even the quasi-formality of calling him “Cap.” They went back too far together. “The only thing I can think of now is to pull back into one tight wall in the center, maybe try to get across that creek.”
Spencer had been thinking much the same thoughts. “They’ve got to have a trap laid on for us there, Alfie. But …” David paused, briefly, then almost shouted, “They’re here! Hang on!”
The wait seemed eternal to Alfie. His body started to shake. Who’s here? He feared that it was some cruel hoax, or a mirage, some last kick in the face before the end. God, David, what’s taking you so long? Tell me something, anything.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” David said when he returned to the channel. He cut in Lieutenant Hopewell and the rest of the noncoms on the circuit. “Our relief force is here. In twenty-eight minutes we’ll have two flights of Spacehawks and the entire 1st Battalion in to help us. The men are already in their shuttles, ready to head down as soon as
Victoria gets into position. We just have to hold for another twenty-eight minutes.”
Alfie felt an instant of giddy elation, but it could not last. Twenty-eight minutes or twenty-eight hours. Not much difference, he thought. He had no more than a half magazine of ammunition left in his rifle, and two clips of needles for his pistol. If the enemy started coming again, the ammunition wouldn’t last for half of the necessary time.
Tony Hopewell passed the news to the civilians on the line with him. They had no radio links. The men who had come from the Commonwealth Excelsior reacted much more positively to the news than most of the Marines did. The civilians had little conception of how difficult it might be to hold on long enough for the close air support and the battalion of Marines to get in. The short break in the enemy assault gave the civilians a chance to quietly exult. But they did remain down, and silent. Only Jeige McDonough said anything that the others could hear.
“Maybe the Feddies will figure out that we’ve got help coming down and leave us alone.” By that time, the pause in the enemy attack had lasted for nearly four minutes.
Hopewell said, “Don’t count on it. Feddies don’t give up that easily.”
It was almost as if his words were the signal for the next wave of Federation soldiers to start moving in.
Shadda had met the news of impending rescue with no more than a blink. He heard the words, but they did not seem to register. The concept was too abstract to assimilate. A long, soft sigh, another blink. His mind seemed to throttle down, his senses dulled. Sound seemed muted, the way it can be with water in the ears. His sight lost focus, as if thin sheets of gauze had been drawn across his eyes. When the enemy troops started in again, they appeared to move in a most exaggerated slow motion, a series of stop-action photographs, a surreal ballet.
Shadda lined up the first of them in his sights and pulledthe trigger. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. For an instant he even fancied that he saw the bullet in flight, inching toward its target. He watched in captive fascination, certain that the bullet was going to strike the soldier, that the wound would be lethal.
Impossible though it was, Shadda could swear that he did see the bullet strike the soldier high in the chest on the left side, saw the shudder of impact, the spurt of blood, and the start of the soldier’s fall. In his peculiar state of awareness, Shadda thought—briefly—that the soldier would fall on top of him. The idea was absurd. Despite Lorenqui’s perceptual anomaly, the soldier dropped thirty yards away.
Shadda’s eyes followed the man to the ground. The appearance of unnatural slowness continued until the helmet hit turf and rebounded slightly. Then time seemed to resort to its normal speed. Shadda glanced around. There was another target. He fired quickly, but poorly, missing the man completely. Shadda took a deep breath and tried again.
&nbs
p; Twenty-eight minutes? he thought as that shot also missed. We should live so long.
Jeige McDonough felt a fluttering in his chest after hearing the news that relief was coming. He had feared to cheer, afraid that showing any reaction might negate the possibility of survival—an atavistic superstition. He wondered if his wife remained safe, but could not glance in that direction. He was afraid to look away from the front, certain that the instant he did there would be a soldier standing right over him, ready to finish him off. The break in the attack had given him no relaxation. Those minutes had passed with incredible speed, and once the soldiers started coming again, time was both fast and slow, simultaneously. The enemy advance seemed speeded up, but there seemed to be virtually no passage of the time required for the new Commonwealth force to arrive.
I hope Mai has finally realized that I cut her off from liquor for her own good, he thought.
Jeige was a terrible shot. He had never fired at a humanbeing before, had rarely hunted lesser animals. Even on Camerein, on the few occasions when he had gone out on a hunting expedition, he had never shot to hit any of the animals that they hunted. Now, the soldiers were sometimes no more than twenty yards away before they fell. Jeige pointed his rifle toward the middle of the torso. He tended to close his eyes and jerk the trigger, both traits deadly to marksmanship. As far as he could tell, he only scored one hit, an embarrassing bullet to the groin of a hapless Federation soldier.
None of the Marines had really noticed Marie Caffre crawling around, going from body to body to find a rifle and ammunition. If anyone had noted her crawling toward the perimeter, generally along the route her husband had taken some minutes earlier, they had not said anything or tried to stop her.
I’m no helpless child, Marie thought as she moved toward the perimeter. And I’m no crazy parasite like The Windsor, either. She had watched his display of insanity with habitual scorn. His outbursts came as no surprise to her—not that she would have admitted it if they had. Her grudge against royalty in general, and the royalty of the Second Commonwealth in particular, had its roots a thousand years before the first men had left Earth to settle new worlds. The medieval disputes between France and England, the series of wars that had extended through centuries, all were grist for her political fervor. That her own world, originally French-speaking, was a member of the Second Commonwealth—and had largely switched to English as a first language—had rankled since she was a schoolgirl. Before her marriage to Henri, she had dabbled at political activism, organizing protests, publishing diatribes against aristocrats, the Commonwealth, and anything else that happened to rouse her ire. She had even managed to get arrested during a demonstration once. She had been only partially relieved when the charges against her were dropped. That had deprived her of a small martyrdom.
I’m better than any royalty, and The Windsor most of all, Marie assured herself as she found a spot on the perimeter. I’ll prove it right here, once and for all The cringing fool
Marie Caffre had never fired a rifle in her life. But she had been watching the Marines. She remembered the steps, taking the safety off, making certain that there was a round in the chamber. She sighted, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil was more than she had counted on, and there was obviously something wrong with her technique. Her thumb had smashed into the right lens of her night goggles. But she settled back into position. Now that she knew what to expect, she did a little better. After a half dozen shots, she thought she might actually be doing some good. After all, the Federation soldiers were so close that she could almost have spit in their faces.
She was not at all prepared for the terrible pain that came as two bullets slammed into her back at a very sharp angle. Marie screamed in terror and pain before she lost consciousness.
Zol Ketchum was dead. That bothered Nace Jeffries, as much because he didn’t know when or how it had happened as from the fact of the death itself. Terry Murphy was unconscious. He might or might not survive, depending on how long it took to get him into a trauma tube. Igor Vilnuf was still fighting, but like Nace had been wounded more than once. Teece Muldon was the only one left from the squad’s first fire team. He had moved to the corner with Nace and Igor. So far, they were still keeping the enemy from reaching them. That wouldn’t last much longer, though. They had only four rounds of ammunition left apiece.
“We’re going to have to let them come on in,” Teece told the others. “Save those last rounds for the last few yards, then get up and use our bayonets.”
“How ‘bout we pull back instead,” Nace suggested. “Do what we can to last until 1st Battalion gets in.”
“I’ll check with the captain.” That conversation lasted no more than ten seconds. “We pull back to the next cover,” Teece said. “Igor, you cover us while we haul Curls.”
There was no way to avoid it. All along the northern half of the perimeter, David pulled his men—the last few survivors—back. Shortening the line was their only hope, and not much of a hope at that. The attacks were still coming mostly from the north and east. There had been nothing but scattered shots and grenades from the west and south. The commandos pulled back toward the dense treefall undergrowth that sheltered Prince George and most of the civilians, dragging their wounded along.
After the four-minute pause, the enemy started forward again, but only in two spots, roughly opposite Tony Hopewell and his few civilians on the right, and against Alfie Edwards’ squad on the left. It was clear that the Federation force had also taken considerable punishment. This assault was lighter than any that had gone before, fewer men, fewer shots.
There was another difference. The soldiers did not try to storm all the way in to the Commonwealth line. They took cover fifty or sixty yards out, often behind piles of bodies, trying to cut down the opposition from that distance.
David glanced at the timeline on his visor display. There were four minutes left in the promised twenty-eight. We’ve got a chance, he thought. As long as they don’t rush us. His throat was dry. He had been unable to raise any spit. He wasn’t certain how much longer he would be able to talk. There were three minutes left when he received a call from the Spacehawk flight leader.
“We’re coming in just ahead of the shuttles,” the pilot said. “I’ve got some bad news for you, though. Three more Feddie shuttles just grounded three hundred yards east of your position. They were in before we could launch any munitions at them. We’ll do what we can, but you’re goingto have a few minutes that could get hairy, until 1st Battalion gets to you.”
“Do what you can.” David’s voice cracked and threatened to seize up completely. He coughed. “We’re about out of ammo. They take very long, and all they’ll be able to do is count bodies.”
“I’ve got twelve birds here, and we see your positions. We’ll put as tight a ring around you as we can. Get your heads down when the shooting starts. Under two minutes now.”
David had to waste several seconds sipping water before he could pass the news to his men. Pull back and hunker down. Then the lead shuttle pilot was on line to tell him where the landers would put down, where his reinforcements would be coming from.
“As close as you can get them,” Spencer said. “I wouldn’t even object to a platoon rappelling down in the middle of us.”
“I wish I could help you, but we’re going to have to land in the same place the Feddies just did, after a few Spacehawks make sure none of them are left there. There’s just no other open space within reach.”
The Spacehawks came two at a time, in quick succession. Each launched a pair of high explosive air-to-surface missiles on each pass, working their way around the Commonwealth perimeter. The fighters killed speed until they were traveling slow enough to use cannons. Each had two six-barreled guns that could spew out eighteen hundred .50 caliber rounds a minute.
For the commandos and the civilians they were guarding, it was like being at the eye of a hell-storm. Scores of rockets tore at the forest around them, felling tre
es, ripping vines, digging up craters. Hot shrapnel flew. Dozens of small fires started, though nearly all failed to survive longer than a few minutes. Smoke rose from charred wood and leaves. Trees fell in every direction, some splintered and falling in two directions. The smell of explosives was thick.
The noise was beyond belief. Marines turned off the external microphones on their helmets. Some clapped hands over the sides of those helmets, as if that could help. All the civilians could do was press hands against ears, trying to keep out the worst of the din.
Spencer did not even hear the first word that the shuttles carrying 1st Battalion had landed safely and that their reinforcements were moving toward the commando detachment. He didn’t hear the news until the aerial assault had ended and there was relative silence around him.
The radio call seemed to come out of a cave, the voice strangely damped, distant. First Battalion was on the ground and moving toward them. The Spacehawks would remain on tap for any additional help that might be needed. The pilots could see no trace of Federation soldiers moving; no enemy helmet electronics were active.
David could not get rid of the hollow ringing in his ears. He was not aware that the pilot had been shouting, that he had been shouting back. When he started to hear rifle fire again, it seemed to come from miles away.
Finally, he could hear that gunfire more clearly. Most of it was some distance off, and had to be coming from the Marines of 1st Battalion. Some of the rifle fire was closer, though. The enemy soldiers were retreating from the reinforcements, and that was carrying them directly toward the remnants of Spencer’s command.
