L13TH 02 Side Show

by Rick Shelley

  “There’s women in that research team,” Walker said.

  * * *

  It does make a difference, Joe thought as he walked back toward his foxhole. But, right at the moment, he could not tell himself exactly why it made a difference that there were women in the research team. Why was it more repugnant to kill them than their male counterparts? They were all civilians, highly trained professionals making an important contribution to the defense of the Accord of Free Worlds. At least, they would make an important contribution if they, or their research data, ever made it to a safe Accord world.

  Joe doubted that any of them signed up for their project thinking, I may have to be killed if we do good work and the Heggies come along. He doubted that any of them wanted to die. Any more than I do, he thought. But he had accepted military duty willingly. He had always known that there was a chance it would kill him, and he had seen too many other soldiers die to have any illusions left. But those deaths had always come as a result of a free choice those men had made, knowing that death was a risk.

  I wonder what they’re thinking now? It was a question Joe couldn’t answer, and he decided, without too much difficulty, that he really didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

  * * *

  Dr. Philippa Corey, her team, and their SI guardians were already in what was nearly a tomb. A Heyer had been buried. One of the backhoes had been used to excavate a trench deep enough, and after the APC was driven into it, the dirt bad been backfilled. The only exit left uncovered was the top hatch. Two air vents in that provided circulation. Above the hatch–propped open just a few centimeters to provide additional air until the fighting started–there was a circular hole surrounded by a low dirt rampart. From outside, that hole looked like any other foxhole, except up close. The Heyer was safe from just about anything short of a direct hit by a large rocket or a Nova shell right in the hole.

  Gene Abru sat quietly on one of the bench seats in the troop bay. The mixer wasn’t quite as crowded as it would have been with as many soldiers in full kit. The civilians weren’t burdened by weapons, ammo, and all of the other field gear that a soldier would be carrying. Nine civilians and five SI men.

  No one in the Heyer had said anything for more than thirty minutes. Most avoided even looking at any of the others. They sat almost motionless, their eyes staring at the floor, or at their knees. One dim red light gave the Heyer some little illumination. The soldiers with their night-vision visors could see fairly well, the civilians less so.

  Gene could see most of the others without turning his head. He did watch, because he always watched. But, mostly, he paid little attention to what he was seeing. More important was what he was hearing, a running commentary from Colonel Stossen’s headquarters. Abru and his teammates were linked to the command staff channel. They heard all of the intelligence as it came in, heard the radio conferences among Stossen and his staff. If the 13th were overwhelmed, or about to be, the SI men would hear it over the radio.

  And know that they had to execute their final orders.

  Before the Heyer had been fully buried, Gene had decided how he would do that. Fourteen people in a small, confined space with metal walls and dirt all around. Two or three fragmentation grenades set off in those confines would leave little of anyone. Even the battle helmets and net armor of the SI men would do little to stop shrapnel like that. But first, by no more than a second, a phosphorus grenade would be detonated in the small box that held the data cubes with all of that important research data. Those cubes had to be destroyed as well as the people who had created the data.

  If they go, we go. The decision had been easy for Gene: no leftover guilt to worry about afterward. If there were time, he would take his helmet off before he detonated the grenades, just to be absolutely certain that the end was quick.

  It will leave a pretty little puzzle for the Heggies, Gene thought, and he managed a thin smile at the prospect. A buried armored personnel carrier crammed with people who had just sat there and turned themselves into sausage meat. What would the Heggies make of that? I hope it drives the lot of ‘em out of their friggin’ minds. Gene felt considerable satisfaction at that prospect.

  * * *

  Roo Vernon could do just about anything possible with a Wasp, and not a few things that the technical manuals said were impossible. He could take a Wasp apart and put it back together. He could even rebuild one of its antigrav engines, almost blindfolded. And, although he had no formal training in engineering, he was absolutely confident that he could design a better fighter than the Wasp, or make significant improvements to the machine.

  He was comfortable around his planes and tools. He definitely wasn’t comfortable around officers, though, except for pilots. They were a different breed. But Roo had left his van and his crew to seek out Colonel Stossen’s command post. What he had to say had to be said face-to-face. He couldn’t adequately do the job over the radio. Another man might have been able to, but not Roo Vernon.

  “Colonel?” He found Stossen sitting inside a Heyer, alone at the moment.

  “Yes, Sergeant?” Stossen set his mapboard aside and turned more toward Vernon.

  Roo identified himself. “Me and the boys been thinking, Colonel. We’ve got plenty of spare 25mm cannon pods and ammo, and a lot more rockets than our four Wasps’ll be able to use. We got to thinking, there oughta be a way to put all those spare munitions to use here.”

  Stossen blinked rapidly, several times. It was something that hadn’t occurred to him. “Did you come up with anything?” His voice was casual, belying the unexpected excitement he felt.

  “We think so, sir.” Roo waited for the colonel to tell him to proceed. “Wouldn’t be the work of but maybe two minutes to rig a manual firing system for the cannons. We put two together, just to see would it work. Takes a bit longer to rig a tripod strong enough to handle the cyclic rate, but we carry parts that’ll do it, from level to about 40 degrees elevation, 360 rotation.”

  “How many can you put together in an hour?”

  “Put all of us on it but what’s needed to service the birds, maybe five of ‘em, Colonel.”

  “Get to it. What about the rockets?”

  “Can’t fit any TA to ‘em. But let a target get close enough for a man to eyeball it so’s the rocket’s video system can lock on, we can set up a remote launch switch from spare radio circuits. That don’t take hardly any time at all. Manually arm the rockets one by one, then use the radio clicker to launch.”

  Stossen came out of the Heyer. “Get with it. Grab any help you need. I’ll send people to collect them and put them where they’ll do some good.”

  “Aye, sir. We’ll get right on it.” Roo saluted and started to head back toward his truck.

  “Sergeant Vernon?” Roo stopped and turned back to the colonel.

  “You may have just saved the 13th. We get through this, I won’t forget.”

  Roo was too embarrassed to do anything but salute again and run off toward the work he had just volunteered for. He still didn’t know that any of it would really work. He wouldn’t know that until somebody actually pulled the trigger on one of the devices.

  * * *

  There was no warning before the first salvo of Schlinal 135mm shells dropped into the 13th’s position, but it was still no great surprise. Anyone who had given it any thought assumed that the Heggies must still have some armor in the area, close, just waiting for the right time. And it came in heavy for five minutes. The best estimates that the Accord had suggested that a Nova with its automated loading equipment could maintain a sustained rate of fire of slightly over five rounds per minute, as accurate as the available targeting data permitted.

  Target acquisition was a weak point for both Accord and Hegemony on Jordan, though. Each side had been knocking out the other’s spyeyes as quickly as they could be tracked and attacked. The Accord could attack Schlinal satellites
from space. The Schlinal garrison had to work with ground-launched missiles. They had no fleet in orbit around Jordan.

  “Here it comes,” Joe Baerclau told his platoon–an unnecessary gloss since everyone could hear the exploding shells. “Watch for their mudders.”

  The Nova fire didn’t seem to be particularly well directed against specific targets. The bursts were spread, seemingly at random, throughout the area that the 13th had secured.

  They must still be quite a way off, Joe thought. Had the enemy tanks been closer, or had accurate ranging from infantry observers, the line of Heyers behind the frontline foxholes would certainly have been among the first targets.

  After five minutes of concentrated fire, the rate of incoming rounds slackened off considerably. That too came as no great surprise to Joe. A Nova had a limited capacity for ammunition, and the Novas would be moving rapidly now, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and their last firing points, scurrying to get out of the way before counterbattery fire or Wasps could get to them. The barrage did not completely end, but it grew much lighter and would likely stay light until the tanks had a chance to take on more ammunition from their support vehicles.

  Several more minutes passed before Joe heard any small arms fire, off to his left, the east, and–apparently–well out in front of the lines.

  “Lieutenant, we got any receers or other patrols still outside?”

  Joe asked. The patrols he had sent out to plant mines and bugs had been back for quite some time. As far as Joe knew, all of the patrols doing that work had come back to their holes an hour or more before.

  “I’ll check.” No more than a minute passed before Keye was back on the channel. “There’s a reccer squad out yet on this side. They shouldn’t be in front of us, but who knows. Tell the men to be careful who they shoot at until the receers get in.”

  “Why aren’t they on the visor display?” Joe asked.

  “Reccers.” It was almost a curse the way Keye said it. “Probably got their position markers turned off so the enemy won’t spot them.”

  “I thought that was impossible.”

  “Far as I know, it is,” Keye said.

  Joe passed the word to his men that there might be friendlies coming into their field of fire. “So be careful. Those reccers are on our side.”

  After another long look out beyond the foxholes, Joe felt around on the ledges he had carved into the sides of his own “nest.” There were grenades close at hand, spare spools of wire for his carbine, even meal packs and one of his two canteens, all within easy reach, and where he would know exactly where to reach for whatever he wanted. Two extra power packs for the rifle were in his tunic pockets. He wouldn’t need either of those soon.

  He opened a meal pack and waited the few seconds it needed to warm up, then ate, slowly, hardly looking at what he was doing. His eyes continued to scan the forest and tall grass beyond the perimeter. The trees were thin, but only in a few narrow areas facing the platoon did his men have really clear fire zones. There had been no time to cut trees and haul them out of the way. In a few spots, there were even what might prove to be dangerous avenues, allowing enemy soldiers to get within twenty-five or thirty meters without exposing themselves. Maybe. The platoon had done everything they could to cover those approaches.

  “Keep a sharp watch now,” Lieutenant Keye said over the company channel. “The enemy is close, maybe within two hundred meters in some areas.”

  Joe dropped his empty meal pack to the bottom of his foxhole. It bounced down into the grenade sump, out of the way. He switched the safety off on his zipper and settled himself into firing position. The waiting was almost over. That nearly made up for what might follow.

  MAJOR GENERAL Kieffer Dacik was in his mobile command post, beyond what had been the Accord front lines in the sector no more than twenty minutes earlier. He was on the move, following the battle. His aide and intelligence chief were with him, along with two clerks, the driver, and one man to handle the turret splat gun. All but the latter two were busy on the radio, jumping from one conversation to the next, trying to keep in touch with what was happening in a dozen different firefights and three distinct sets of troop movements.

  Basically, no one knew just what was happening. Information was starting to come down from CIC, but that data was always at least three minutes out of date, and the situation was so fluid that those three minutes might have been three hours.

  “Hold to the orders you were given,” Dacik told one SAT commander. “As long as you can move, move. And try to keep the information flowing.”

  The general was in the process of switching to another channel when an enemy tank round hit, too close. The explosion was enough to pick the APC up off of its tracks and flip it onto its side. Power went out inside. The force was such that even the helmet electronics of the men inside were cut.

  It was more than a minute later before Dacik could even think that far. He had been tossed and rolled. At least two of the others had dropped on him before the Heyer came to a halt.

  I’m blind was Dacik’s first–almost–rational thought. He could see nothing at all. It took a few more seconds for him to realize that he couldn’t hear anything either. So close to an explosion, the blast could easily block hearing–temporarily or permanently.

  Fear ran through the general, numbing fear, at the prospect of being blind on a battlefield, and trapped. For an instant, he was completely paralyzed by terror. Only gradually did it occur to him that his blindness might well be the result of a total lack of light inside the troop compartment. He felt his face. The visor was gone from his helmet. Then he fumbled his way to the rear of the Heyer–once he’d figured out which direction that was. He had to crawl over one of the others, an unconscious someone, to get to the hatch. He got both hands on the latch but couldn’t budge it at first. He had to shift position and work up, against the weight of the door.

  When it did start to open, there was some little light, enough to let him know that he wasn’t really blind.

  The general wedged himself in the hatchway, sighing deeply, too relieved at being able to see again to do anything else. He was still there when someone came over from outside and pulled the hatch up the rest of the way.

  “General, you okay?” It was Colonel Ruman, the operations officer.

  Slowly, Dacik nodded. “Get someone to check on the others.”

  He half fell out of the Heyer and got up slowly, slightly dizzy, uncertain on his feet. After fighting with the vertigo for just a few seconds, Dacik sat down. Before he could fall.

  Other soldiers were rushing over now. A medic stopped to check the general, but Dacik waved the man off. “I’ll be fine. Get to the men still inside there.” He pointed at the vehicle–or not quite at it. He was still too dazed to get it right.

  At some point, not more than a minute or two later–though Dacik himself had no idea how much time had elapsed–someone put an open canteen in front of the general’s face. He took one long drink, then another. His head was beginning to clear.

  “Thank you.” He looked up to see who had given him the water. An enlisted man, someone he didn’t know by sight.

  Dacik turned to look at the overturned Heyer. The other four men who had been inside had been brought out. Hof Lorenz, his aide, was sitting with his back against the APC. The others were all flat on their backs. Medics were working on two of them. After taking a deep breath, the general tried to get to his feet again. He was still light-headed, but he did manage to stand. After waiting to see if he could stay there, he walked–slowly, uncertainly–over to Captain Lorenz.

  “You okay?” Dacik asked.

  Lorenz nodded. “Yes, sir. Just banged up a bit. But Colonel Lafferty’s dead.”

  Dacik turned so quickly that he got dizzy again. He reached out to support himself against the Heyer.

  “The clerks will both
be okay. One’s got a busted leg, the other a dislocated shoulder. Maybe head injuries on both,” Lorenz said. “I think the gunner’s dead, though, and the driver looks to be in real bad shape.”

  “Your radio working?” Dacik asked.

  “No, sir. Blast must have zapped it. Yours?”

  “Gone. You up to a little work?”

  Lorenz took a deep breath. “I’ll try. I think I can navigate, but don’t look for any speed records from me, General.” He got up almost as slowly as the general had. He started flexing and stretching, testing his limits. The pain in the back of his head was the least of his concerns at the moment. Hof Lorenz certainly didn’t look like a parade-ground soldier now.

  “First thing, we need working helmets. Then”–Dacik hesitated–“for the time being at least, I guess you’re going to have to fill in as my intelligence officer, at least until you can get to Captain Olsen.” Olsen was Lafferty’s deputy.

  “I think he’s somewhere out with the point, General.”

  “Soon as you’ve got working helmets for us, give him a call. I’ll want him back here as soon as possible. But radios first, working helmets. I need to know what the hell’s going on.”

  * * *

  There had already been a number of brief exchanges of wire along the 13th’s perimeter as Schlinal patrols, up to company strength, tested the Team’s defenses. None of those probes had come close to Echo Company yet, but twice men in one or another of the platoons had fired out into the woods, at some real or imagined sight or sound. Nervous men. Frightened men.

  Joe Baerclau was nervous himself. Little information filtered down to him about what was going on around the perimeter. Most of the time, he could only try to guess based on what sounds he was hearing and how distant they seemed to be. In some ways, the waiting was always worse than the fighting that followed. It was certainly more difficult mentally. Once a fight started, you could respond more or less automatically, based on training and experience. Silent waiting took a different toll.