by Rick Shelley
At Dem’s side, Fredo sat with his rifle muzzle out the left-side cab window. The safety was off, and his finger was over the trigger guard, lightly, ready to move at the slightest provocation. He stared toward the north as if he expected to see the trucks carrying the Schlinal force. They were too far away for that though, if Dem had taken as big a loop around them as he thought.
“You still plan to curve back in front of them?” Fredo asked.
“Yes. They’re on the shortest track to the 13th. All we have to do is stay in front of them and follow the 13th’s tread marks. That way, the Heggies’ll never know that there’s another vehicle out in front of them.”
“They wouldn’t know if we stayed a couple of klicks over to the side either,” Fredo pointed out, “We know where everybody’s at, as long as that mapboard still works.”
“That couple of klicks might make the difference in our catching up in time.”
“In time for what? You think that nine of us are going to affect the outcome?”
Dem just glanced at him for an instant. “We belong there, Fredo. We belong there.”
* * *
An hour after sunset, the 13th turned slightly toward the north, closer to the river. Thirty minutes after that, 4th recon left their APCs and moved away from them on foot, into the forest. As the rest of the 13th reached the first group of parked Heyers, they too stopped and disembarked. The running was over.
“This is probably the best defensive position we’re likely to find,” Stossen told his staff when they gathered near his command post. “We’ve lost too much time to keep running. We’ve got a fight on our hands. All we can do is choose the ground.”
The colonel had already issued his preliminary orders for the various components of the 13th. Everyone was moving into position as quickly as he could. It would take some little time for them all to get situated. Fourth recon was out to try to make sure that the rest had that time.
“We’re at the extreme range for Wasps operating from behind our lines,” Teu Ingels said. “But we can’t look for any help from there. It looks like all hell’s broken loose back there.”
“I talked to General Dacik two hours ago,” Stossen said. “Crunch time.” He let that hang for a moment. None of the others broke in with any comments. “The next twelve to twenty-four hours will likely tell the tale. Win or lose, the Jordan campaign is near the end. Our job now, besides making sure that those scientists don’t fall into enemy hands, is to keep as many Schlinal troops occupied for as long as we can. We do our job right, maybe the general will manage to pull Jordan out of the coals.”
* * *
There were a handful of trucks that had backhoes or scraper blades. They couldn’t possibly do enough excavation to provide sound cover for every vehicle with the 13th, but they did what they could. Men with shovels worked as well, as many as half of the regiment at a time. More was needed than simple foxholes for the infantry. Positions were arranged close behind the perimeter for the Heyer APCs. Their splat guns could contribute materially, as long as the APCs could be protected. Trenches were dug for them, with the dirt piled up in front and on the sides, lessening the amount of surface accessible to enemy rockets or tanks shells. Camouflaged thermal tarps might help them escape detection as well, for a time. The support trucks for Havocs and Wasps were camouflaged and bunkered also, farther back, in the last stands of trees before the river. The 13th’s remaining Havocs were split. Only half were kept with the perimeter that was being hastily established. The three remaining guns of Basset Battery, the one left of Afghan, and one from Dingo were sent on farther east with their support and orders to “get lost”–avoid detection–but stay close enough to help when the fight came.
Joe Baerclau dug his foxhole between first and second squads, working fast even though he took time, frequently, to look up and down the line to make sure that everyone was working, and doing the job right. “We don’t have all night,” he warned–among other banal cautions. What he said wasn’t all that important. Every man in the platoon knew what was needed. The platoon sergeant’s voice was enough to keep anyone from slacking off.
As soon as he had his own position prepared, Joe started walking the platoon line. There were faint sounds of firing by then, in the distance, where 4th recon was operating. Several of the line companies also had men out beyond the new perimeter, to set mines and listening devices along the most obvious approaches to the 13th’s positions. Joe spent as much time looking out beyond the platoon’ s line as he did inspecting the foxholes the men had dug and the other preparations they had made. Somewhere out there was the enemy.
“First and third squads. We need a line of mines and bugs across the platoon front. Mines at 80 and 120 meters. Bugs at 200.”
The two squad leaders got their men up and moving out. The rest of the platoon waited, ready to provide covering fire should that prove necessary. In the meantime, the men continued working. Joe walked back the length of the platoon’s section of the perimeter, then walked back to the three Heyers that were dug in behind it. Lieutenant Keye had his command post slightly behind and off to the right, behind the junction where first and second platoons met.
“Your men ready?” Keye asked.
Joe lifted his visor and nodded. “Soon as the men get back from laying out greeting cards, Lieutenant. Any word on how close the Heggies are?”
Keye shook his head. “The ones who’ve been playing tag with us can’t be far. The rest . . . just take a look at your mapboard. One regiment could be here in less than an hour, the other two not long after that. Within two hours, we’re going to be ass-deep in them, maybe four or five to one against us.”
“We’re gonna stay right here and slug it out?”
“Far as I know,” Keye said. “That’s the current plan, anyway.”
“How ‘bout we haul some of the reserves up to the line, ammo and food?” Joe suggested. “I’ll feel a lot better if I’m not worried about running short of wire again.”
The lieutenant’s hesitation was minimal. “Get your working parties out.” He turned to the first sergeant. “Pass the word to the other platoons, Izzy.”
Joe gave the lieutenant a casual salute, lowered his visor, and headed back to his men. On his way, he paused to look at the three Heyers. All were dug in so that their front splat guns were just barely above the earthen berms in front of them. That fire wouldn’t be far above the heads of men in foxholes on the line. The turret guns would be less of a hazard. Except to approaching Heggies.
“While they last,” Joe whispered. He had no illusions. The Heyers would draw heavy fire from the start. They were unlikely to survive for long, even dug partially in.
* * *
Zel Paitcher almost hyperventilated. He was back in his Wasp for the first time since being relieved. It felt so good that he started breathing, deeply and quickly, until he started to get light-headed. By that time, he had trouble slowing his breathing again. A slight pain developed in his forehead over the left eye.
He took his hands off of the control yoke one at a time and flexed them. He had also been gripping the yoke too tightly.
I am nervous, he thought. He scanned his heads-up display and the monitors below it. They told him everything he needed to know about the Wasp, and everything that was known about its surroundings. Irv Albans was flying off his right wing. Jase Wilmer and Roy Carney were flying together, some distance away. The latest data on enemy locations was on the map monitor, some of the information hard, most of it guesses based on outdated intelligence.
The Wasps were looking for the enemy now, not just to update the data.
“That one vehicle moving by itself, that must be those reccers they told us about,” Irv said when the single infrared blip showed on his TA system.
“I’ll go down for a closer look,” Zel said. “You stay up here to make sure I don’t find more than I expect.”
>
He hardly waited for a response before easing back on the throttles. The Wasp started down like an express elevator. Zel turned the nose to come up on the truck from behind. He wasn’t worried about being spotted from the ground. It was dark enough for invisibility, and with the engines throttled back, he couldn’t possibly be heard over the sounds of a truck engine.
Zel came down below fifty meters, an equal distance behind the truck. At that range he could distinguish the individual heat signatures of seven men in the rear of the truck-at that range, clearly a Schlinal half-track. The truck was moving too fast for foot soldiers to keep up, and there were no other vehicles anywhere close.
A smile played over Zel’s face as he thought, I could almost get close enough to make sure those are Accord helmets. But he wouldn’t. At that range, his Wasp would occult enough of the sky to be noticeable, and he didn’t want to spook the reccers into firing at him. Instead, he eased the throttles forward and started to climb.
“It’s them,” he told Irv. “Now, let’s find the Heggies who’re chasing them. They can’t be far.”
Twenty kilometers.
“In and out,” Zel reminded his wingman. “We’re just here to slow them down.”
“And pare them down,” Irv replied. “The more we zap, the fewer there’ll be to hit our mudders.”
In the dark, the Wasps had every advantage. There was nothing visible of them until they fired their first rockets at the lead trucks. Then, before anyone in the half-tracks could respond, they allowed themselves a four-second strafing run before they split, one to either side, and climbed as rapidly as they could without blacking out from the gee-load.
Three Schlinal SAM rockets came up into the night sky, blind shots. None achieved target lock. They rose harmlessly, then fell back after they exhausted their fuel and momentum.
For their second run, Zel and Irv came in from straight behind, almost at ground level, too low for their Wasps even to show up by occulting stars. Missiles and cannon. Once more the two fighters split, left and right, and climbed away from the enemy column.
“Now let’s see if we can find the next batch of ‘em,” Zel said. The other pair of Wasps was already looking for that next collection of Heggies.
* * *
The crew of Basset two was out of their gun. They were hiding under bushes some twenty meters from it. They had stretched a thermal tarp over the Fat Turtle. Now all they could do was wait.
“I feel like my butt’s hangin’ out the window,” Simon muttered after they had been in position for fifteen or twenty minutes. “Out here all alone, nothing but a pistol in my hand.”
“Shut up,” Eustace said, mildly. “It could be worse. The guns shut up inside the perimeter got no room to maneuver. Not enough, leastwise. The shooting starts, they won’t last long if the Heggies bring up Novas or Boems. Out here, we got a chance.”
“Chance for what?” Simon asked. “To be the last ones bagged by the Heggies?”
Eustace growled. “If it comes to that. Even that’s somethin’.” We’ll give ‘em what-for even then, Eustace promised himself. As long as they had the Fat Turtle and rounds to fire, they would keep fighting. And after that, they still had their pistols.
Eustace grinned. Bloodthirsty bastard I’ve become.
He cleared his throat. “If the dope we got was good, we’ve got an hour, hour and a half, before we have to worry too much. Unless the Heggies have more Novas lying doggo in close.”
“Like we’re doing,” Simon said.
“Yeah.” They ambush us, we ambush them. Helluva way to run a war.
“Peekaboo, I see you,” Karl Mennem said in a falsetto.
“We didn’t play it with 200mm howitzers when I was a kid,” Simon said.
“Enough,” Eustace said. “You guys try to get a few minutes’ shut-eye. It might be a long time before we get another chance.”
THE NOISES in the night might almost have been nothing more than distant thunderstorms. More rare than the muted crump-thump of explosions were the brief flares of light that the infantrymen manning the 13th’s perimeter saw. More rarely yet, a man might hear an artillery shell whizzing overhead, outbound. There was fighting going on, but it wasn’t close. Not yet. In fact, the obvious distance of the enemy–marked by the muted sounds of Havoc shells and Wasp rockets exploding–had a calming effect on many of the infantrymen waiting in their newly dug foxholes.
A lullaby was how Joe Baerclau thought of it. One man per fire team was left on watch. The rest tried to get some sleep. Nearly everyone was exhausted enough to sleep now, if only fitfully. Joe might have wakened a half dozen times in the hour he permitted himself to sleep, curled up in his foxhole. Sometimes it was one of the distant noises that woke him. At other times, it was a brief message over the radio, or someone moving close by. But each time he woke, he would listen for a moment to satisfy himself that the danger wasn’t imminent, and then slide back into sleep for another minute or five. Until the next time.
It was a little more than an hour before Ezra Frain called and told him that his time was up. Joe took several deep breaths and went through a stretching routine. He stood and looked around. The flashes were no longer quite so far away.
“They’ll be here before long,” he told Ezra over a private channel.
“Last word from the lieutenant was that we might have another hour. The Heggies that have been chasing us have been slowed down quite a bit. All we’ve seen lately is a few sniping incidents from the Heggies right around us. I guess the rest of them are waiting for reinforcements.”
“They might wait until all of them rendezvous,” Joe said. “Now that we’ve gone to ground to wait for them. They don’t have to slow us down any more.”
“Sounds logical to me,” Ezra said. Then, after a pause, “Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“This is gonna be worse than Porter, isn’t it?”
“Could be, Ez. Nobody’s going to come in-system to rescue us this time.”
“This last hour, just sitting here waiting–there’s been too much time to think. I’m scared, Joe, more scared than I’ve ever been before.” When Joe didn’t say anything, Ezra continued, “I mean, there really hasn’t been time to get deep scared before. All that crazy riding in the mixers. No time to think there. Even back on Porter, we were too busy for fear most of the time.”
Most of us, Joe thought. “Don’t let it eat at you, Ez. Nothing we can do about it now. Try to get a little sleep. I’ll look after the squad.”
“I managed to catch some sleep in the mixer earlier. Don’t know how, but I did. It would take a patch to put me to sleep now, and we don’t have that much time.”
“Probably not. When’s the last time you talked to the lieutenant?”
“About twenty minutes. I think he’s trying to sleep now. I was over there. He looked like he’d aged ten years the last coupla days.”
“I’m going to take a short walkabout, and get something to eat,” Joe said. “Call me if you see anything.”
He checked his rifle then climbed out of the foxhole, careful not to damage the berm he had piled around it. After taking a minute to do more stretching–his knees had gotten stiff curled up in the foxhole–Joe walked along behind the platoon’s section of the line, warning each squad that he was coming as he neared it. He talked to the men who were awake, looked over the defensive emplacements again, and stared out into the night quite a lot. He went to one end of the platoon, then back to the other, and finally he dropped behind the line to the APCs. There was only one man in each of those, the assigned driver. They would also operate the splat guns. The mixers were too vulnerable in the kind of battle that was almost certain to develop to put two men in each.
The first sergeant was manning the company’s CP while Lieutenant Keye slept nearby.
“Anything new?” Joe asked.
Iz
Walker shook his head. “Not really. Still no sign of enemy aircraft. That’s the only real good news we’ve had. They don’t seem to have too many tanks left either, far as we can tell. The bad news is that it looks as if we’re going to be facing four regiments of Heggie mudders in an hour or two.” His chuckle was mirthless. “None of them are anywhere near full strength anymore.” He paused before he added, “They probably still outnumber us by four to one.”
“What about the rest of our people?” Joe asked.
“Can’t make much sense from what we’re hearing about that,” Walker said. “They’re up to their earholes in trouble. A real set-to, no lines left. Heggies attack in one place. We attack in another. They’ve broken in and we’ve broken out, different places. Trying to turn each other’s flanks. A real nightmare.”
“Who’s winning?”
“No idea. I don’t think anybody has any idea. Maybe in the morning we’ll know. One way or the other.”
“You think it’ll end that fast?”
“Maybe, maybe not. No damn way to tell.”
“What about the civilians?”
Walker stared at Joe for a minute or more before he answered.
“All I’ve got there is scuttlebutt. Last I heard, they’re stuck in a hole, a bunker, with an SI team. Abru–you know him?”
“We’ve met.”
“If it looks as if there’s any danger of the Heggies getting the scientists, Abru’s got orders to give them the whack.”
“He’ll do it, too, if he has to,” Joe said.
Walker nodded. “Those SI guys are all loons, and he’s one of the worst.”
“Or best, I guess, depending how you look at it,” Joe countered.
