by Rick Shelley
The medic from third squad, the only other one left in the platoon, got on the radio to say that he was on his way.
“Stop wasting wire!” Captain Ingels said on his all-hands channel. “Third and 4th platoons. Left and right. We’ve got maybe a dozen snipers out there. First recon on the south. Let’s get them fast.”
* * *
“Kill the engines,” Eustace Ponks ordered. Simon hit the switches. Basset two was at the base of the road that climbed the escarpment.
“We’ve got less than an hour till first light,” Simon reminded the gun chief after the engines fell silent. “The way we’ve been going, that’s just barely enough.”
“I’ve got to look at that tread,” Eustace said. “That vibration is driving me crazy. I keep thinking we’re going to Iose the drive wheel any second. That happens at a bad place on this road, we go right off the side. You want to chance that?”
The climb would be dangerous enough as it was. The people of Porter had never anticipated that heavy artillery pieces would be using their road from rift valley to plateau. The route had been blasted out of the stone. Some of the switchbacks were cut back into the side of the escarpment, and most had little room to spare for a vehicle the size of a Havoc self-propelled howitzer. The weight of the vehicle meant that there was also a danger that it would crack off part of the roadway . . . and fall to the base of the wall with the rock.
“You lookin’ at it ain’t gonna stop the vibration,” Simon said. “There sure ain’t no time to do any more work on it. We either make it or we don’t. We either drive the old gal up this road, or we walk it. Either way, don’t make no sense to stop and stare at that damn wheel again.”
Eustace felt a flash of anger, but he bit back any immediate retort. He looked across the gun barrel at Simon for a moment, knowing that the driver was right–and hating that.
“Okay, let’s go. But slow. Maybe you got your wings polished, but I don’t.”
Simon Iaughed and started the engines again. He adjusted the idle until he was satisfied with the sound, then eased both treads into gear. The Havoc edged forward. Simon rotated the throttles forward, slowly.
“I’ll get us to the top,” he said. “Hell, this ole gal survived a direct hit from a rocket. Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop her now.”
Rosey had already started the support truck up the road. Near the first swItchback, he had stopped, waiting to see what Eustace was going to do with the howitzer. Once the gun started moving again, the truck also resumed its progress. The truck went first. That was in case something did go wrong. The gun would not take out the truck on its way down.
“Some guarantee you give us,” Eustace had mumbled, but the trucks had all gone up ahead of their guns–the rest of the battery was already on the plateau–and they had followed the Havocs down the other day.
The rough road never climbed at more than a 27-degree angle. A Havoc in good condition would scarcely have balked at 45 degrees, up or down, but climbing a steep slope with a jury-rigged drive wheel might be asking for too much trouble. The extra burden on that axle. . . Eustace shook his head. I wouldn’t even think about trying anything more than 30 degrees, he lied to himself.
Before long, Eustace found himself holding his breath again, as if that might make it easier for Basset two to make it up the narrow road. He kept his eyes on the outside monitors, jerking away from them only long enough to look out directly through one of his periscopes. He had two of those, fore and aft, each capable of turning through 210 degrees, providing overlapping fields of view.
The first switchback was only twenty meters above the floor of the rift valley, two-hundred meters from the start of the slope. The builders had taken advantage of a natural ledge that angled gently up to the first switchback.
Simon had to reverse the right tread for the turn. There was not enough room to go around the curve simply shifting the transmission for that tread into neutral. Eustace held his breath again. The turns were the most likely places for the drive wheel or tread to come off, or for the axle to snap.
Basset two made the turn without difficulty. Eustace detected no change in the vibration coming from the drive wheel. But he didn’t relax after the gun was moving straight again. Each subsequent turn would be higher, some at a steeper grade.
Sweat started to form on Eustace’s forehead. By the time Basset two was halfway up the escarpment, the sweat was flowing into his eyes, stinging, but he didn’t wipe it away. When he didn’t have anything else to do with his hands, he held on to the arms of his seat as if he were afraid of falling out.
Where the road reached its steepest grade, the pitch of the vibration from the right tread increased in pitch and volume. The shaking became gross, not subtle, as if the drive assembly were tearing itself apart. Yet again, Eustace held his breath, trying to hold the repairs together by willpower.
“Slow it down, just a mite,” he told Simon, softly, his voice strained.
Simon didn’t bother trying to change Ponks’s mind. Obediently, he eased off on the throttles, just a hair, slowing the gun by perhaps no more than a half kilometer per hour. The gun was already barely creeping. The slope had eaten most of the power the engines were putting out on the reduced throttle settings he had been using before.
“Planes on the scope,” Eustace announced a moment later, followed almost instantly by, “Wasps. I’ve got the recognition signal.”
“Hope you’re sending our RS too,” Simon said under his breath.
“Loud and clear,” Eustace said. Be hell to get shot off this wall by our own birds. There was enough danger in the climb without that.
The Wasps flew on until their signal was hidden by the lip of the plateau.
“They didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry,” Eustace said. “Must not be any Heggies close by”
For the next twenty minutes, the men rode in silence. Then, “Last switchback coming up, boss,” Simon reported. “After that, it’s smooth sailing. The road bends back and gets almost level.”
Eustace didn’t need the travelogue, but Simon couldn’t hold back.
“Don’t relax yet, Simon,” Eustace said. “We’re near the top, sure, but that just means we’ve got farther to fall if something goes wrong.”
“You want to get out and walk?” Simon demanded, his temper finally beginning to frazzle. “You can get out and I’ll chase you the rest of the way to camp, goose you with the gun every time you slow down.”
“Simmer down, and keep your mind on your driving.” Eustace regretted his own show of temper almost instantly, as did Simon. But as was usually the way between them, both men simply went silent. For the rest of this ride, there would be no conversation that was not absolutely required.
It didn’t matter. Five minutes later, Basset two had successfully made the last turn and was moving away from the edge of the escarpment. Even if the drive wheel gave out now, it would only mean a short walk. There would be no fall in their metal cage.
IN A FEW hours, the 13th Spaceborne Assault Team would have been on Porter for eleven days. The days, and nights, were getting no easier for the strike force west of the capital city or for the bulk of the 13th on the plateau. The Schlinal garrison had not attempted any additional full-scale attacks on either element of the invading force, but there were almost continuous harassing attacks against one or the other.
The strike force consisting of Echo and George companies and the 1st and 3rd recon platoons was on the march again, moving northwest, away from Porter City–but without getting closer to the territory controlled by the rest of the 13th. A second shuttle had managed to get in just before sunset the previous afternoon. That lander had taken off several more wounded and had brought in two cases of wire–the last ammunition available for the strike force. At that, it had amounted to only two spools per carbine. That would not last long in a serious fight.
Joe B
aerclau put one foot in front of the other. Thinking beyond that was becoming difficult. He scarcely recalled the previous step or imagined a future that held the next one. From time to time, as he happened to think about it, he did look around to see how the platoon was moving, or to tell the squad leaders to keep close track of their men, but the most routine duties had become infinitely complicated for a mind numbed by too many days of little sleep, short rations, and long hikes. Movements were leaden, tortured. Even the occasional moments of attack no longer excited the men. They went through the defensive routines with all the life of zombies. They tried to eliminate the attackers, or stalemate them, and the march would go on.
And on.
Kam Goff had taken on the duties of squad medic after AI Bergon was wounded. Al had been evacuated to the hospital ship. Kam was scarcely qualified to act as medic. He had only the same cursory training in first aid that all recruits went through, but he could doctor blisters, and that was the main call on his services. Beyond that, he could bandage a wound, or wrap a knee or ankle in a soaker . . . and direct the injured man to Doc Eddles.
The new duties appeared to have helped settle Kam’s anxieties. They gave him something to think about besides his fear, and the way that combat paralyzed his mind. When he was going to help a buddy, or working with a wounded man, he did not have the reaction he had had to walking up and seeing the dead or wounded before. There was a little color back in his face, and only the exhaustion he shared with everyone else seemed to dull his reactions.
“We’ll take fifteen here.”
Captain Ingels’s voice over the noncoms’ circuit startled Joe. He passed the word to the platoon and blinked rapidly several times, as if just waking from a vivid dream. I must have been asleep on my feet, he thought. He stood motionless, his body swaying as if he were about to fall.
That would be the easiest way to get to the ground. Even that idle thought couldn’t bring a smile to his face.
“Take a little care for your positions,” he told the platoon. “Don’t get caught with your butts in the air. We can’t tell when we’ll get another attack.”
Then, at last, Joe sank to the ground. For a moment he just let his head sag, the chin strap of his helmet on his chest. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, on the verge of falling asleep. But there was no time for sleep. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Not long enough to sleep. Too long to stay awake.
“Joe?”
“Yes, Lieutenant?” Joe had to shake his head to get his mind working again.
“One more hour. That’s what the captain says. Then we find a place to stay put for at least four, maybe all day.” Lieutenant Keye sounded as tired as Joe felt.
Joe Iooked around, trying to spot where Keye was. He had lost track of the platoon leader, and that was a bad sign. Everything seemed to be a bad sign lately.
“Another hour’s going to be rough on everyone, Lieutenant, including you and me.”
“I know, but it’s going to take that long to reach a place that’ll give us some security. And space for pickup, just in case. No, there’s no word yet, either on relief or on a ride back to the plateau.” He paused. “At least, no word we’ve been told about.” Keye cursed himself silently for rambling. He might be as tired as his men, but it was still bad form to show it so clearly.
“Better be soon, Lieutenant. Another day and we’ll be out of food as well as everything else.”
“They’re getting short on the plateau too, Joe. We’re going to organize a couple of hunting parties, if we can, after we bivouac for the night. Maybe after we’ve all had time to get a little sleep.”
“’Hunting parties?”
“’Recon will handle that. Most of those snipes have been hunters since they learned how to walk.”
Fresh meat would be a treat, Joe thought. “Take a lot of meat to feed everybody,” he said.
“Every little bit helps,” Keye said. “How’s Goff holding up?”
“Pretty good now, sir. We’re still keeping watch on him, but there’s been no sign of trouble since he started handling the blister detail.”
“Remember that,” Keye said before he signed off.
* * *
“Can’t help you this time, Lieutenant,” Roo Vernon told Zel Paitcher “That entire port drive has to be replaced, and I can’t do that here. Not now, at least. That’s a three-man job, and we’ d have to bring the replacement drive down from the ships. Even if the colonel okayed that, it’d take three, four hours of work once we got the parts. And without a clean room to work in . . .” He shook his head. “Be better just to slide the bird into one of the heavy transport lifters and do the work back in the hangar, on the ship. And we can’t get one of those down here without more security than we’ve got. Sorry, sir.”
Zel wanted to scream his rage, his frustration, but he didn’t. If the bird couldn’t be repaired, it couldn’t, and no amount of shouting would change that. Still, for a long moment, he could do nothing but stare at Roo, his body trembling with pent-up emotion. Then the emotion seemed to drain away, suddenly, and his body went rather limp. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“’I know you’ve done your best, Chief,” Zel said. Under his breath, an intense “Damn!” slid out.
“We’ve got one other bird in the same shape out of Red flight,” Roo offered. “Short as we are, maybe the colonel will authorize bringing down the repair parts. I’m sure he wants as many of them flying as possible.”
“But you don’t think it’s a good idea to try the repairs here.”
“Not the best, no, sir. I wouldn’t guarantee the work for more than ten hours of flying time ’less we do it in a clean room. An’ that’s pushing it. Get dust and organic molecules in there, fouling things up. The control circuits can be mighty touchy about that. You saw what happened, before, sir. We got something in your bird and it shut right down. You were lucky, sir. It happened on the ground last time. This might be worse. A little speck of dust caught in the wrong connection can raise the heat 20 degrees in no time at all. Use the bird hard and you can go right on by the safety Iimits, not even know what’s happened until you get drive failure. Temperature fault like that, you couldn’t even count on ’jecting safely.” Roo paused for a moment, trying to come up with some way to make the lieutenant feel better about his plight.
“’Nother day or two, likely everybody be grounded,” was the best he could find. “We’re down to the scrapin’s on munitions now. Won’t any of it last much longer. Your plane, sir, I’ll have to get in and strip what ammo you’re carrying so we can keep another bird flyin’ that much longer.” Privately, Roo doubted that the ammunition would last even one more full day. If the Heggies made one more determined assault on the 13th, the remaining Wasps would run dry in short order.
Zel looked at the ground. He was out of the air, probably for the duration of the campaign–unless a couple of other pilots had to be grounded with planes that were still airworthy, and that was highly unlikely.
“I guess that makes me a mudder,” Zel said eventually.
“’Fraid so, sir,” Roo said, sympathy in his voice. “Other pilots who lost their birds, colonel’s took ’em right into the HQ detachment.” Roo failed to suppress a chuckle then. “He’s got the highest ranked rifle squad ever, I think.”
Zel looked up then.
“Sorry, sir,” Roo said quickly. “I just couldn’t help myself.”
Zel was slow to say, “That’s okay, Chief. If it wasn’t me, I’d probably be making the same sort of comments.” He had made the same sort of comments, talking to Slee about the three other pilots who had lost their planes but remained healthy themselves.
“This campaign can’t last much longer,” Roo said, trying to be conciliatory. “Relief be here soon, maybe afore the day’s gone.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Zel said. He shook his hea
d. “Talk to you later, Chief. I’d best go report to the colonel. If I can find him.”
“Last I heard, sir, HQ was still up by Bravo Company,” Roo offered.
* * *
The Schlinal commander on Porter had not bothered to return a garrison to the city of Maison. There would be time for that later. After the Accord troops were destroyed, the people of Maison would be next on his list of Things To Do. They had to have helped the invaders. At a minimum, they had permitted the Accord to attack and destroy or capture the troops stationed there. He did not know yet which was the case. Either way, it really did not matter. In any case, the punishment for Maison would be severe, and extended. But . . . later. After the burr of the Accord had been eliminated from Porter, he would think about punishment for Maison. Anticipation was half the fun. The Accord: the Schlinal commander did not assume that they had merely killed all prisoners out of hand, as he might easily have done in similar circumstances. After all, they had turned loose the prisoners they had captured in Porter City. Without weapons, helmets, boots, or clothes, true, but they had not harmed anyone after capture.
“It’s not as if I actually need the men they left in Maison,” he reasoned.
He still had more than sufficient troops for the job. It was just a question of bringing everything together in just the right way at just the right time. Soon, the Accord would be low on ammunition and food. Even with all of his satellites out of commission, the commander could still tell how many enemy ships were over his planet. There had been no reinforcements, no additional stores of ammunition coming in-system. Or food. The invaders would be easy pickings when they got hungry and short of wire. The Schlinal commander had no delusions about the quality of his troops. They would not have been assigned to garrison duty on a world like Porter if they had been first-rate combat soldiers. Most were conscripts. Many were too old and out of shape for the front lines. But they had the numbers, they had the weapons, and they had more than enough ammunition to deal with the enemy. After all, no more than two thousand or so could have landed, and they had taken casualties. The Schlinal commander had no idea how many casualties, but that there were some was obvious.
