by Rick Shelley
This night march was Iittle longer than the one Echo had made to Maison, but it was much more draining because of the terrain. Good boots eased the load on feet, but there was still the constant pull at leg muscles strained first one way and then the other. After five hours, Joe wondered if he could possibly keep going. The calves of his legs felt as if they had been bound in piano wire, and the wire was contracting, cutting into skin and muscle.
He was walking on a modest side slope, a layer of shale tilted by less than twenty degrees and strewn with igneous rocks that had fallen from another stratum, when his left foot slid out from under him. Joe’s right foot caught against a rock for an instant, and he nearly tumbled headfirst down a three-meter embankment. His right ankle twisted as that foot came free, and he went down on his hip. After sliding halfway to the bottom of the gully, he managed to stop himself. For a moment, he could do no more than that. He let his head drop back against the rock and sucked in air.
His foot. No, not the foot. The ankle.
“You hurt, Sarge?” AI Bergon asked, sliding more carefully down the slope to come to a stop next to Joe.
“Right ankle,” Joe replied. “I don’t think it’s sprained. I just twisted it.”
“Better let me have a look.”
“No time.”
“No time is what it’ll take,” AI said. “You aggravate it and it’s more than you think, then we have trouble.”
Bergon didn’t wait for his sergeant to agree. In his function as squad medic, he did have a certain amount of authority, authority that Platoon Sergeant Maycroft and Lieutenant Keye would support in an instant. While AI talked, he started taking off Joe’s boot and sock. His hands moved around the ankle and along the muscles above it.
“Just a little swelling,” AI said. “That may be just from the walk, not from the twist. I’ll wrap a soaker around it and you should be fine.”
He was already peeling the wrapper from the medicated bandage, and he got it secured around Baerclau’s ankle in seconds. The analgesic in the soak started to work instantly, though the nanobots that would do any real repair work would take somewhat longer to do their job. Joe could feel the hot tingle of the bandage. He closed his eyes for a moment. The ankle had pained him more than he had really been aware, judging from the relief he felt as the pain started to abate. By the time his sock and boot were back on, the ache was scarcely a dull throb–bearable.
“I’ll be able to walk on that,” Joe said. He flexed the ankle several times. Despite an initial stab of renewed pain, that actually seemed to make the ankle feel better.
“And the soak’Il take care of any muscle pulls or such,” AI said. “But be careful the next hour or so. If there’s more wrong there than I think you’ll know that soon.” Probably, within the first ten minutes, Al thought. In the field like this, he was limited to what he could see and feel for his diagnosis.
“You okay down there?”
Joe looked up, even though the voice had come over his radio. Max Maycroft was standing at the top of the gully, looking down at him. Joe clicked his transmitter over to the noncoms’ channel.
“I will be, Max. Slight twist. My own damn fault. Careless. But it’s all taken care of now.”
To demonstrate that, Joe got to his feet and started to scramble up the slope. Before he could object, Al Bergon was at his side, one hand half supporting him. Joe felt an irrational flush of anger, but squelched it before it could show in his face, or in the way he moved.
“Thanks, Al,” he said when, they were both off of the slope.
“Don’t feel bad,” Maycroft said, standing with his feet braced wide even though, he was on nearly level ground. “We’ve had twenty people do that, that I know of. Some of them were hurt worse than you are. Best boot treads in the galaxy, and they’re still not secure on a slippery bit of shale.”
“I just got too careless, Max,” Joe said, feeling more embarrassed than hurt at the moment. “Five, six hours of this shit. It was just getting to me; and it shouldn’t have.”
“I know what you mean. But now that you’re back on your feet, you might as well get off them again. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Captain’s decided that we all need a breather. Our orders have been changed, in any case. Once we get to our positions, the idea now is we sit doggo until sunset, unless we’re discovered. Hide. Recon lads will do a little work of their own. And the Havocs, but not us. Now, grab a quick bite, a little water.” He paused a second before he added, “Maybe a stimtab as well. That’ll help clear your mind.”
Joe nodded slowly. “I should have thought of that myself, Max. Gotta watch it. I get a little tired, and I’m getting careless. That can get people killed, and not just me.”
“Don’t read anything into what I said but what I said,” Max told him. “That wasn’t a chewing out. It was just a suggestion.”
Joe shrugged. “Whatever you say, Max.” He didn’t see the humor in his words. When Maycroft laughed, Joe looked up quickly, caught completely unaware.
“That’s the spirit,” Max said. “Now, on your butt. Give that soaker a chance to do its work.”
* * *
Zel Paitcher stood behind his Wasp and watched Tech Sergeant Roo Vernon work. Zel was cold, despite the flight suit that was supposed to be adequate protection against any temperature down to minus twenty degrees Celsius. There was a decidedly chilly breeze blowing across the plateau, close to 25 kilometers per hour, but the temperature was closer to 20 above than 20 below.
All in your head, Zel told himself. The breeze could only touch his face and hands. He wouldn’t feel so irrationally cold if he were in the cockpit, where he belonged. He wouldn’t feel so cold if he weren’t worrying that there might be something seriously wrong with Blue four, something that might keep him out of the air. As tiring as the long hours in the sky were getting to be, Zel knew that he preferred that to sitting on the ground and being nothing more than a spectator.
Zel had his arms folded tightly against his chest. He moved around a lot, stamping first one foot and then the other. The sense of cold was no less real merely because he knew that it was an illusion, a trick of his mind.
Roo worked in silence, his head up in the portside drive compartment of Blue four. Warnings had flashed on every monitor in the cockpit when Zel tried to power on. The Wasp’s self-diagnostic routines were thorough, but they were almost instantaneous. Each of the computers that minded the circuits in the aircraft was dedicated to servicing just a small portion of the works. The system had shut itself down before Zel could get his hand to the switch.
Zel never even considered going over to Roo to offer his help. Though he had a basic understanding of the theoretical workings of the antigrav drives, he had virtually no mechanical competence–not with those drives. Even if he had been relatively competent, Roo would have turned down the offer. Blue three and four were his Wasps. He knew them better than their designer, or so he would claim. He knew the idiosyncrasies of each one. He knew what they could do, what they would do. And he had The Touch with them.
Slee was sitting in the cockpit of Blue three, waiting. The squadron commander had vetoed the idea of Slee going off without a backup, or with a wingman he was unused to, unless that became urgently necessary. Instead, the next pair of flyers in the rotation had been wakened and sent aloft.
Roo finally came out from under the Wasp. “She should be all right now, sir,” he said. “Heat problem. Somehow got some dust caked in where it oughtn’t to have been, and that like to baked a coupla circuits.” He looked around. “Small wonder, I guess. But she’s fine now.”
“We’re ready to go?”
“Two minutes. We’ll put a new battery in on that side, just to make sure.” The Wasps that had gone up in place of Slee and Zel were almost due to land again anyway. The rotation would, probably, remain changed.
“Thanks, Chief,” Zel said. “Put an
other beer on the tab I owe you when we get back to base.”
Roo grinned. “I think this is a two-beer tally, sir. I really do.”
“Okay, two beers.”
“Just bring her back in one piece, sir.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Climbing into the cockpit and strapping himself in felt strangely liberating to Zel. The cold was instantly forgotten. Getting into his Wasp was almost like coming home. Soon, he would be back in the air, where he belonged. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Just about ready, Slee,” he said over the radio. “Soon as they button in a new battery.”
“About time,” Slee replied. “I was about to fall asleep.” Then he regretted the statement as a gaping yawn forced its way out. Sleep. What’s that? he wondered.
* * *
The last half hour of the night march was sheer misery for Joe Baerclau. It wasn’t that his ankle continued to bother him. Indeed, his right ankle felt fairly good. But he had been trying to ease the burden on it, and that had put more strain on the rest of that leg, and the other, and walking unnaturally had caused his knees to stiffen up and brought a growing ache to his lower back. But Echo and George companies had finally reached the bivouac areas that the recon platoons had found for them, scattered through two deep gullies, and a patch of thick scrub forest where the two gullies met. There was water, and there was cover, all that an infantryman could ask for. Back near the head of the longer ditch–it averaged about nine meters deep–there were several small caves. Captain Ingels had moved into one of them. It would be his headquarters through the day. Another was turned into a dispensary for the soldiers who had been injured on the march. At least the caves were dry and unoccupied. No local beasties had come charging out to voice their displeasure at company.
“Come on, Sarge,” Al said once the squad was in position. “I want the doc to have a Iook at that ankle of yours. You been limping something awful the last couple of klicks.”
“Don’t mind me,” Joe replied. “The ankle doesn’t hurt. A couple hours of rest and I’ll be good as new.”
“l hope so, Sarge, but I’Il feel better knowing for sure, and so will you.”
Though his mind instinctively rebelled at the suggestion, Joe didn’t resist. After two steps, he no Ionger even tried to shrug off Al’s help in moving. It was not very far from where Joe’s squad had settled in to the cave that was being used as a dispensary.
“Doc’’ EddIes, Echo Company’s senior medtech, wasn’t really a doctor, but his training had gone far beyond that of the medics in the various platoons. The Accord Defense Force had provided him with eighteen months of medical training, enough to qualify him as a licensed medtech in civilian life once he completed his contractual three years of service following training. The 13th only had two physicians, both surgeons, although there were additional medical personnel assigned to the fleet ships that carried the 13th. But Eddles was qualified to handle anything short of invasive surgery, and with the availability of portable trauma tubes, that was rarely needed.
There were three men ahead of Joe, men whose injuries appeared to be worse than his. Doc Eddles was working on another, a private from the heavy weapons squad whose knee had been injured in a fall. Al had a quick word with Eddles, then came back to where Baerclau was sitting, propped up against the rocks outside the cave.
“It’ll be a few minutes, Sarge, but wait it out.”
Joe nodded. By this time, he ached enough that he would wait, if only to get something to ease the pain in his legs and back. “Tell Ezra he’s in charge till I get back,” he said. Then he switched over to his noncoms’ frequency and told Ezra the same thing directly. “Get everyone settled in. Tell them to get what sleep they can. One man alert at all times to pass on anything we need to know.”
* * *
Colonel Stossen palmed the stimtab almost as skillfully as a magician, and used the excuse of covering a yawn to pop the lozenge in his mouth. Major Parks noticed but showed no reaction. Seeing Stossen take another reminded him of his own exhaustion. He had been sucking stimulants at least as often as his boss. Neither of them had managed twelve hours sleep total in the last hundred. Parks thought of taking another stimtab himself but decided to wait . . . for a few minutes at least. He was well beyond safe dosage already, and an extreme overdose could produce quite unpleasant side effects–physical and mental–though nothing critically dangerous to the body.
“I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, Dezo,” Stossen said after nearly a minute of silence. Exhaustion pressed on him like a weight, making even the simplest action more difficult. The two men were sitting facing each other, Stossen leaning back against a tree cone with his legs stretched out in front of him, Parks cross-legged, leaning forward just a little. “I know I need sleep, but . . .”
“We both do, and so do probably ninety percent of our men,” Dezo said. “Well, maybe it’s not quite that high now. Things have been quiet long enough to let a lot of them catch up.” Somewhat. No one really found much rest in a combat zone, even when they had the time and the quiet. Minds simply refused to let go enough to allow deep sleep. “Why don’t you take four hours now? I can hold on that long, and then maybe I can get a little shut-eye after you’ve rested.”
Stossen hesitated for quite a time before he shook his head slowly. He was having trouble thinking through even the simplest statement.
“Not yet. I want to make sure that George and Echo aren’t hit at dawn.” As if he might be able to do anything if they were. Stossen looked up at the sky. The east was beginning to show a little light, even to bleary eyes. The strike force was farther west. Dawn would be nearly thirty minutes later for them than it would for the rest of the 13th. “And the Havocs. What’s the latest from them?” Stossen grimaced mentally. He had completely forgotten the artillery that he had sent to rendezvous with George and Echo.
“They’ve all gone to cover for the day. According to Lieutenant Ritchey, they’re in a wooded area, cover not as good as he’d like it, but probably adequate.” No gunnery officer was ever satisfied with the available cover. “The guns are under heat tarps. No mechanical breakdowns, no sign that the guns were spotted at any time during their run.”
“How far are they from Echo and George?” Stossen knew that he should remember that bit of data, but it just wouldn’t come to mind.
“About twenty klicks,” Parks said quickly. “Close enough to bring their guns to bear in a hurry in case the strike force is attacked.”
“What are we missing, Dezo?”
Parks took a deep breath. “We still haveri’t located the troops that the Heggies moved out of Porter City. At least five thousand, maybe twice that number. They’ve gone to ground somewhere, but the spyeyes haven’t been able to find them yet. Either they’re somewhere we haven’t looked, or they’ve got cover too good for the eyes to penetrate.”
“In other words, they could hit us with almost no warning.”
“It’s possible. That’s always been possible. But it’s also possible that they’re waiting to see what we do, just making sure that they don’t have all their eggs in the same basket. If they haven’t spotted either element of the strike force, they might keep on waiting. That could be either good news or bad.”
“What’s your best guess?”
Dezo shook his head. “I don’t know that I have one. Just no data to build an intelligent guess on. Worst case, those troops could be sitting somewhere waiting for us to attack Porter City, waiting to pincer our strike force the way we did the Heggies from Maison. I think that’s what I would do under the circumstances.”
“Are we ready for that?”
It was Parks’s tum to shrug. “With everything we have. Whether or not that will be enough is another question. It depends on how hard they hit and how much warning they give us. We get the Wasps in as quickly as possible. If it’
s just the infantry spotted, we also have the Havocs chime in. Then, if necessary, we can move another company or two of infantry down as quickly as we can get shuttles in and loaded–say, eighty minutes with a little luck.” That was an overly optimistic estimate, depending on the ships being in perfect position for immediate deployment of the shuttles, but Colonel Stossen would know that as well as Parks, did.
Stossen rubbed at his cheeks with both hands. He needed a shave. From the feel of it, it must have been two full days since his last one. He could not remember. For a moment, the idea of appearing less than ready for a parade distracted him, worried him. Too many years as a garrison soldier, he told himself.
“It’s no good, Dezo,” he said finally. “I have to have some sleep or I’ll drop. Not knowing about our relief . . .” He never finished that thought. Even with a partially dissolved stimtab in his mouth, Van Stossen fell asleep. Parks propped a pack next to the colonel to keep him from falling over, then moved away. If only he could guarantee Stossen all the sleep he needed.
* * *
By four o’clock that afternoon, Joe Baerclau could almost forget that he had hurt his ankle the night before. There was no pain left, not even when he flexed the ankle as vigorously as he could. He even felt rested, for the first time since landing on Porter. Doc Eddles had hit him with a sleep patch, without telling Joe what it was. That sleep had Iasted for four hours, but Joe had slept on naturally for two more hours. He hadn’t even remonstrated with Ezra very strongly for not being wakened sooner.
