Test of Fire (1982)

by Ben Bova

  Alec wore a battle helmet, and could hear the crosstalk of a hundred different unit commanders by switching frequencies on the dial set into one of the earphones. They had chosen the frequencies carefully to be out of the range of Douglas's antiquated radio equipment. Each sector commander checked in as the drizzle died away. Finally Alec asked Jameson, "Ron, how's it look on your end?"

  Jameson's voice was crisp and calm in his earphones.

  "Everything set here. All unit and sector commanders are ready and eager to go."

  Alec glanced at his wristwatch. Five-fifty. The attack was planned to start at six, when Douglas's men would be starting their breakfasts, looking to their cook-fires rather than watching for an attack.

  As he waited for the minute hand to crawl along, Alec's mind filled with the images of all the things he had been through: the storms, the cold, the mud. And the nights with Angela, the warmth of the fire, the heat of their passion. And the towering gray old man who had driven him away.

  With a shake of his head, he focused his thoughts on the reality before him. The morning was clearing rapidly, the clouds breaking up and scuttling away on a fresh, clean breeze. The Sun was bright and already starting to feel warm on his shoulders and neck.

  "Minus ten seconds," he muttered to himself.

  Turning the dial on his earphone to the general frequency, Alec heard the chime tone that confirmed that the frequency was tuned in and open.

  "All sector and unit commanders . . . commence attack. Now."

  The truck he was standing on lurched forward, then gained speed smoothly as it climbed toward the top of the hill it had been hiding behind. Trailing it, three other trucks and a pair of jeeps trundled along. The jeeps passed Alec's truck, speeding toward the crest of the hill.

  They reached the top and started downslope.

  Putting the binoculars to his eyes, Alec could see the thin strand of fence wire winding across the rolling countryside, half a kilometer ahead. Two watchtowers were in view and a hill crowned with a firebase stood off on the horizon.

  They've seen us now, he knew, watching the figures atop one of the watchtowers moving rapidly and gesticulating. Are they surprised? Or have they been waiting for us? Are they as scared as I am? And Alec realized that his heart was racing; he could feel it pounding in his throat, hear it in his ears, amplified by the 'phones clamped to the sides of his head.

  They sped toward the fence and off to his right Alec could see a band of cavalry troops riding hard to keep pace with them. The jeeps were up ahead.

  Flickers of fire danced at the tops of the watchtowers but Alec could hear nothing except the rush of the wind as his truck tore forward.

  The lead jeep fired a missile at the nearest watchtower and Alec followed its smoky exhaust as it passed within a few meters of the tower's top, then arced into the empty ground inside the fence and exploded.

  "We're in range of the fence!" shouted the gunner, sitting strapped into the plastic jumpseat that jutted out to one side of the massive laser mount.

  Alec turned to him. "Burn it down."

  The laser's special power generator hummed into life and then its vibration was drowned out by the high-pitched whine of the laser itself. The beam was invisible, but where it touched the fence the wire mesh flashed into incandescence and charred and curled like the wick of a candle.

  The jeeps swerved toward the opening and the laser gunner swung his attention to the watchtowers.

  The nearest one was still firing when the energy beam touched it. The tower top burst into flame.

  And then they were inside the fence, racing across the bumpy countryside. The wind tore at Alec's face. The jeeps were both intact and pulling even further ahead of them, swinging left to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the firebase's artillery. Glancing toward the rear, Alec saw the cavalry squad pouring through the gap in the fence. The watchtower was burned and silent.

  He saw a flash from the hilltop and an instant later the ground erupted far off to his right. The dull heavy roar of the explosion reached him as the black cloud hurled tumbling chunks of earth high into the air.

  Get past the firebases and engage Douglas's mobile reserve. That was his mission. Leave the firebases isolated and concentrate your forces on his reserves. Smash them before they can organize a counterattack.

  Two more artillery shells hit in front of them.

  The shock and noise hit simultaneously and the driver veered the truck hard to the left as debris pelted down on them. Alec saw a pair of smoking craters where the shells had hit; they looked raw and painful in the gentle earth.

  More shellbursts, but falling further behind now. Then one struck close enough to knock one of the jeeps over. It rolled crazily, scattering broken pieces of men and machinery across the grass, and finally came to rest on its side. As the truck swept past it, the jeep burst into flames. No time to stop for the wounded. Not now.

  A gently sloping ridge rose ahead of them. Alec knew this countryside by heart. If there was going to be trouble anywhere, it would be this ridge line.

  Douglas had been turning it into a natural defense line, adding man-made earthworks where the ridge itself flattened out, so that the line completely covered the flank of his base, twenty klicks from the innermost fences. Between the ridge line and those fences was nothing but flat open country.

  They charged up the ridge, Alec hanging grimly to the rail of the laser mount, expecting land mines, more artillery fire, small arms fire from troops dug into trenches at the crest.

  Nothing. The ridge was bare of defenders. The flat meadowlands stretched out ahead and Alec could see other units of trucks, jeeps and cavalry dashing across the grassland, too.

  This is too easy, he told himself. Douglas couldn't possibly be taken so easily.

  But they plunged on, bouncing at breakneck speed down the ridge's reverse slope and slewing out onto the flatland. Occasional shellbursts reminded them that the firebases were still active, but the artillery fire was desultory and did nothing to slow them. If anything, the drivers urged extra speed from their electric motors whenever a shell landed near them.

  Tense with a mixture of exhilaration and fear, Alec clicked his radio dial for Jameson's frequency.

  "Ron, where are you now?" he spoke into the helmet's mike.

  A heartbeat's delay, then, "We've just crested an artificial ramp of earth, about twenty klicks from the edge of the main base area. Not much opposition yet. Lost a truck that fell into a shell crater and a squad of cavalry that took a direct hit. Everybody else is moving forward at top speed. No sign of any real resistance."

  "All right. Keep moving and stay alert." He dialed the general frequency. "All unit commanders, report any delays or ground resistance other than artillery fire."

  No response at all. The radio buzzed to itself.

  Alec said, "All unit commanders, sound off in order."

  "Sector one. No delays, no resistance."

  Jameson's voice.

  "Sector two. No problems."

  "Sector three. Goin' like hell, nobody in our way."

  "Sector four . . ."

  Alec's attention was pulled away by a tug on his sleeve. The gunner was leaning forward in his seat, gesturing to the rear of the speeding truck. A trio of squat, heavy-looking gray shapes was topping the ridge behind them. With the sector commanders still reporting, Alec turned and raised his binoculars.

  They were ugly-looking tracked vehicles, painted dark green and brown. Long cylinders of gun barrels poked from slope-walled turrets.

  Tanks! Alec recalled seeing them on history tapes.

  "Hey, this is sector three," his earphones crackled. "We just picked up some kinda trucks or somethin' following us."

  "All units," Alec shouted, "report on the numbers and positions of enemy tanks. They're rolling forts, heavily armored and carrying cannon and machine guns."

  As if in answer one of the three tanks in Alec's rear belched flame and a shell whistled
over his truck, exploding close enough to jar him.

  That's Douglas' plan, Alec realized. He's had the tanks all along, probably spotted them at the firebases last week. Now he's got us caught between the tanks and his reserves.

  Strangely, Alec felt almost relieved. Now his father's hand was out in the open, where he could deal with it. Tanks without infantry support, he remembered from his teaching tapes, are vulnerable.

  Dangerous, but vulnerable. Inadvertently he glanced at the far horizon, in the direction toward which the truck was speeding. Douglas was up there, someplace. You think you can panic us with tanks, Alec said silently to his father. Maybe it will work for you, but we'll see who the military expert is.

  "Listen to me," he said urgently into his lip mike. "Engage the tanks at the longest possible ranges with the lasers. Use the jeeps and cavalry to get behind them and destroy them at close range. The lasers should try to immobilize them. Go for their treads, their sensors. Stop them first, then destroy them close-up."

  The radio sizzled with confused reports of fighting and losses. Alec tried to sort them out as another shellburst lifted his truck entirely off its wheels and slammed him against the railing.

  Debris pelted him and stung. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  Crouching down near the driver's cab, he shouted, "Zig-zag, dammit! Keep them guessing."

  He straightened and yelled to the gunner, "The treads, aim for their treads! Their armor's too thick to get through."

  Then he realized that the gunner was hanging limply in his seat harness, head lolling, mouth agape and eyes staring sightlessly. Alec reached over and unfastened his harness. The gunner slid out of his seat, rolled over the edge of the mount platform and bounced onto the ground. Another shell rocked the speeding truck as Alec climbed into the seat, suddenly feeling as exposed as a patient stretched naked on a surgical table.

  He swung the laser's sighting mirrors around and tried to hold them on the nearest tank. Flicking the fire control to the shortest possible pulse, he rattled off a train of microsecond bursts. The ground near the tank smoked and sputtered but the tank itself rumbled forward unharmed. The truck lurched violently as he fired again.

  Where the hell is everybody else?

  Alec fired three more times as shellfire racked the truck. He heard shrapnel clanging against the truck's sides, then caught a glance of another truck as they zipped past it. It was gutted, wheels splayed, front end smashed in.

  One of the tanks was turning in a tight circle.

  Got its left tread! Alec rejoiced. A half-dozen mounted men were pulling up alongside it, unlimbering the rocket launchers and grenades they carried. He turned his attention to the second tank and saw, beyond it, that the third one was crawling with men clambering over it, like ants swarming over an invading scorpion. Crumpled bodies lay broken and smashed in the tank's wake.

  If we can knock off the tanks before Douglas' reserves get here . . . Alec dialed the frequency for the second truck in his unit. "Get on the left side of that tank that's still fighting. I'll swing to the right. Spray him!"

  They swung to the tank's flanks. The gun turret swung toward Alec's side and he fanned the laser beam to maximum width and sprayed the entire turret area. Blind the bastards, he raged to himself, hoping that the infrared energy would at least damage the periscopes poking from the turret. Then the tank bloomed into a roaring fireball.

  The other truck's laser had found the engine ducts. The tank shuddered, then burst open like an overripe melon, its fuel and ammunition exploding inside it. The turret blew high into the air. With smoke and steam hissing from every joint and port in the heavy armor, the tank died like a dragon consumed by its own internal juices, hissing and rumbling as it disappeared in smoke.

  It seemed like hours, but it actually took less than forty minutes to clean up the tank counterattack.

  Alec's units helped each other as much as they could, but most of them had to fight their own battles, individual jousts of two or three tanks pitted against a handful of trucks and jeeps.

  The cavalry made the real difference. The horsemen scattered at the sight of the tanks, then while the armored behemoths were engaging the laser trucks and darting jeeps, the cavalry reformed in the rear and attacked with rocket missiles and grenades. Men leaped from horseback onto the tanks and stuffed grenades into the engine ducts or cracked the periscopes and rangefinders that sprouted vulnerably out from the armor. Blinded or immobile, the tanks became more deathtraps than weapons.

  Douglas' reserves arrived to join the battle before the last of the tanks were destroyed, but they were either on horseback or riding lightly armored trucks. And they were spread thin. The breadth of Alec's attack had foiled Douglas' defense plan before the battle began, though neither side realized this while the fighting raged.

  As the battle eddied away from his sector, Alec ordered his truck back up to the top of the ridge that had masked the tanks' advance. From this higher ground he could see much of the swirling, dust-clouded fight, and he had time to check his commanders by radio and direct their actions. The tanks were a good idea, he thought. If we had come in a massive single thrust they would have converged on us and clobbered us. But Alec's broad, fluid advance offered no heavy concentrations of troops to center on, no massed targets for the tanks' cannon.

  As he watched the field peppered with burning pyres and saw his laser trucks slicing through Douglas' lightly-armored reserves, Alec calmly spoke orders into his helmet microphone.

  Douglas' men were beginning to retreat; in some places they seemed to be panicking blindly and racing away, especially where the laser trucks were burning everything they could reach.

  It was not pretty. Alec knew his own casualties were mounting. The stench of death reached him, even up on the ridge; burned flesh and the bitter fumes of explosives and burning oil. The noise was incessant, even through his heavy earphones: explosions punctuating the constant chatter of automatic weapons; roars and groans that might have been the voices of men, but so distorted and tortured that they were unrecognizable.

  He climbed down from the gunner's seat and stood on the laser mount platform. His knees were shaking, his vision blurred.

  This is what you came for, he told himself as he watched thousands of men trying to kill each other. This is what your entire life has been aimed at. He clutched the binoculars that still hung at his chest and started to put them to his eyes. But he hesitated. What if I see Will's body out there?

  Jameson's flat unemotional voice in his earphones snapped him back to reality. "They're breaking up on this end. All the fight's out of them."

  "All right," Alec heard himself say. "Don't bother with the stragglers. Let them go. Make a dash for the base and try to take it before they can set up a last-ditch defense. I'll join you from this end of the line."

  "Check. What about Kobol and his special unit?"

  "He'll follow my squad."

  "Right. I presume you'll give the necessary orders in your usual crisp, military fashion."

  Alec almost smiled. Jameson had detected his depression, obviously. "Yes, yes. Move out in five minutes, no more."

  "We're moving."

  Alec quickly checked with the other sector commanders.

  The battle was disintegrating into a series of separate little skirmishes. Douglas' troops were struggling for their lives now, trying to escape or simply survive. Alec ordered all commanders to ignore the retreating enemy troops and offer surrender to the pockets of men still fighting. Half of each unit he ordered to race for Douglas's headquarters.

  As his own truck started bumpily down the ridge to take the lead of one column that was forming up, Alec relayed his orders to Kobol, who had been waiting back at their takeoff point.

  "Now?" Kobol sounded shocked. "You're heading for the base already?"

  "That's right," Alec said as his truck lurched past a clattering collection of other trucks and jeeps. "We've broken up Douglas' main force. It's nothing more than a mop-up
operation now." He silently added, Unless Douglas has more surprises up his sleeve.

  Kobol mumbled something vaguely sounding like congratulations and promised he would be on his way immediately.

  "Steer clear of the firebases," Alec warned.

  "They're still in enemy hands. Those people might be in the mood to spend the rest of their ammunition on you."

  Before Kobol could respond, Alec clicked the radio off, grinning to himself.

  It can't be this easy, he thought as his truck rushed on toward Douglas's base. But what else could he have? He's used more men than I ever saw at the base. He can't have much more.

  As they sped over the battlefield, past burned-out tanks and trucks, past twisted bodies and moaning, maimed men, past gaping shell holes and grass made slippery with blood, Alec began to realize that it had not been so easy, after all.

  Quick, but not easy.

  He directed his truck to a road, and the column fell in behind him. It was one of the earth-packed trails that he and Will Russo had ridden. It turned around the shoulders of the last few hillocks, darted under a copse of newly leafed maples and birches, and then the first buildings came into view.

  The column of trucks and jeeps fanned out across the hummocky grass as they approached.

  The lasers burned down the fence quickly. The watchtowers here seemed to be empty, abandoned. Alec scanned the base area with his binoculars as they raced past the still-smoking remains of the innermost fence. A few people were dashing about in the streets, running for the shelter of the buildings.

  Jameson reported, "We're less than a kilometer from the western end of the base. No resistance. Hardly any sign of life."

  "Slow down," Alec commanded. "Proceed with caution, but keep advancing. I don't want any civilians hurt, especially the women." He pulled a hand-drawn map of the base from his jacket and told Jameson which buildings his troops should seize. "Get the defenders out of the buildings and into the open. Herd them onto the runways of the old airfield."

  "Check," Jameson said.

  Alec gave similar orders to all his unit commanders, worrying about how long he could expect the raider packs to maintain any semblance of discipline. He headed his own truck straight for the row of houses where Angela and Will and Douglas had lived. As the truck rolled alone through the streets between three- and four- story barracks buildings, Alec realized what a target he made for snipers standing alone on the back of the truck alongside the gleaming metal bulk of the laser.