by John Bowers
“Hold your fire!” he shouted. “Who the hell is that?”
The man facing them didn’t look like any rebel he’d ever seen. He was a big man, rawboned, and wore a camouflage uniform with the sleeves cut off. Tattoos darkened his arms and he wore a red beret. He stared at the warehouse, saw Star Marines staring out at him, and lowered his weapon to his side. He stood there for ten or fifteen seconds, stroking his chin as if coming to a decision. Bullets from behind him forced him to move a few feet down the alley, but there he stopped again, still staring at the warehouse.
“Who is that guy?” Kopshevar demanded. “I’ve never seen a rebel who looked like that.”
“He sure don’t look like no Jesus Freak,” Avila agreed.
Nick stood up, exposing himself. The man was only thirty yards away.
“Drop your weapon! Give yourself up! You can’t escape, so there’s no need to get yourself killed.”
The big, square-jawed man stared at him a few seconds longer, then grinned.
“Fuck you, cowboy!” he shouted back.
“Is that any way for a Christian to talk?” Nick shouted. “What would the Lord think about that?”
The big man’s grin widened.
“Fuck the lord!” he replied. “I am not one of those freaks.”
“Then who are you? Why are you fighting on their side?”
“I’m not! I am fighting on my side.”
“Why did you call me a cowboy?”
The enemy soldier laughed.
“You Star Marines from Terra, no? I see Yancy West vid. I like Yancy West.”
The man had a distinct accent, unlike any Nick had heard on Alpha 2. Still grinning, he lifted his rifle—Nick was unfamiliar with the design—and pulled the arming lever.
“Maybe we have shootout, hey? Just like Yancy West. What is name of vid…? Top Noon, da?”
“No, it was High Noon.”
“Oh, please excuse. High Noon, you are right. You are ready to draw?”
Nick shook his head.
“Don’t do it, man! Give yourself up. You don’t have to die today.”
The big man laughed, then swung his rifle toward the warehouse. Not only Nick, but every man at the windows blazed away before he could pull the trigger. Nick saw blood fountain into the air as he staggered under the impact of their slugs. The rifle fell from his hands and he stumbled back two or three feet before he sat down abruptly, blood gouting from his chest and throat.
As he fell over backward and died, he was still grinning.
Chapter 22
0525 Hours
The next fifteen minutes were fairly quiet. Sporadic firing broke out here and there as the men of Bravo, Charlie, and Delta companies mopped up a few hotspots, but the main event seemed to be over.
The first main event, anyway—the town was far from secure.
“Who was that guy?” Rudy Aquino asked. “I never seen a uniform like that, and I never heard that accent before.”
Nick gazed out at the dead rebel in the alleyway. He was wondering the same thing.
“I’ll go check him out,” he said. “Cover me.”
“Walker! Stay where you are. Let the First Battalion guys do that.”
“Sergeant, I just—”
“If you go out there, First Battalion may shoot first and ask questions never. They don’t know where we are, so just stay put until they link up with us.”
As if cued by DuBose’s words, Nick saw two Star Marines creeping down the alley toward the fallen rebels. Their eyes darted this way and that looking for threats, but they seemed focused on the red-beret guy and the white-shirted bodies. Their rifles were poised and ready to fire. Nick stood up and prepared to call out to them.
One of the Star Marines caught his movement and spun toward him. Nick ducked just as he opened fire and sprayed the warehouse windows.
“Hey! HEY!! What the fuck, man, look before you shoot!”
Both Star Marines now trained their rifles on the warehouse. They were too far away for Nick to see their eyes, but their posture suggested they were jumpy as hell.
“What’s the password?” one of them demanded.
“How the hell should I know? Nobody ever gave us one. This is Echo Company, Second Battalion. Hold your goddamn fire!”
DuBose stood up and added his own voice.
“This is Sergeant DuBose, Third Platoon. Check out the guy in the red beret, tell us what you find. He doesn’t look like the other rebels.”
The two men proceeded to the bodies and one knelt beside them while the other stood guard. Nick watched the man search the tattooed man’s body. After a moment, he stood up and raised a hand, which held some kind of document.
“Doesn’t look like he has a military ID,” the Star Marine reported. “This is a civilian ID from Beta Centauri, says his name is Petrovski.”
Nick’s mind clicked on the information. Beta Centauri was the home of the Rukranians, who had migrated there from Eastern Europe. That explained the name and the accent.
But what the hell were they doing on Alpha 2?
“What kind of rifle is that?” he called out. “I don’t think I’ve seen one like it.”
The same Star Marine examined the dead rebel’s weapon, then shrugged.
“It has no markings on it, can’t tell where it was manufactured. Looks like a .30 cal, or something close to it.”
“Who’re you guys?” DuBose called out.
“Bravo Company. What are you guys doing over there? We were expecting Alpha Company.”
“Alpha ran into a minefield back down by the road. We got orders to take their place. Is everything clear south of here?”
“For the most part. Maybe a few stragglers hiding out, but their defense collapsed pretty fast. They must not have been expecting us—they weren’t dug in very well.”
“You got any corpsmen handy? We have an injured man here.”
“Don’t you have your own corpsman?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know where he is. This guy’s in a lot of pain.”
“I’ll see if I can locate ours.”
The Star Marine got on his helmet comm. Nick turned away, wondering what would be their next move. DuBose should be getting orders pretty soon.
He took another swallow from his canteen. Whatever came next, he had something that needed doing right now. He pulled Avila away from the others and, resting on one knee, confronted him. He kept his voice low.
“The next time I hear you call anyone a faggot, I’m gonna break that banana you call a nose. Are we clear?”
Avila scowled.
“What the fuck for? The guy’s a faggot! Everybody knows it.”
“So he likes guys instead of girls. What do you care? That just leaves more girls for you.”
“I don’t like faggots.”
“You don’t like anybody! And I’m getting pretty sick of your attitude.”
“Fuck you. You’re not an officer.”
“No, but DuBose put me in charge of the fire team, so that puts me in charge of you.”
“Go suck a dick, Walker. There’s no law says I gotta like faggots.”
“No, there isn’t, but in this squad you will not say it out loud. Everybody is different. Meredith is gay. Carlson is black. Wiebe is German. Rudy is Mexican. I’m half Mexican. You’re a Brazilian—”
“Do you have a point?”
“Yeah. Do you think everybody should be exactly like you?”
Avila giggled. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I’d like that.”
“Really? Who would you pick on then? Who would you hate? It would be a pretty boring goddamn galaxy if everybody had your fucking beak! If you piss me off one more time, I am going to fuck you up! And don’t think I can’t do it.”
Nick glared at him another couple of seconds, then returned to the window.
0555 Hours
More men from Bravo, Charlie, and Delta companies approached the river. Several fires could be seen burning in the ind
ustrial zone to the south, but the fighting there had ended. The next phase, as Nick understood it, was to cross the South Trimmer and assault the quadrant directly north of their current position. Crossing that river in daylight didn’t appeal to anyone; gunsleds had scouted the area and reported numerous enemy positions. DuBose received and passed on orders to get ready, but sit tight—the 205s were going to soften up the area before the crossing.
A corpsman from 1st Battalion arrived to look at Meredith, and minutes later he was evacuated by HVM. Lt. Jaeger also stopped in to confer with his sergeants. Everyone was ordered to do an ammo check, but very few had fired their weapons, so they were set.
Jaeger showed them an e-tablet map that outlined the proposed attack route; the river was too deep to ford on foot, so HVIs would be needed. Two broad highway bridges were also available, one a few hundred yards to the east of their current position, the other about the same distance to the west. Several squads from 1st Battalion had approached the bridges and taken positions to prevent the rebels from trying to destroy them. Nick wasn’t thrilled about crossing the river in daylight, but it wasn’t his decision, and they had done dangerous things before.
Nervous small talk swept the warehouse as everyone waited for the word to move out. All talking stopped when the 205s opened up. They heard them coming five or six seconds before they passed overhead; they sounded like a fleet of freight trains ripping through the sky. The ground heaved when they landed, and the roar was deafening. Fortunately, the giant shells landed a quarter mile beyond the river, so the sledgehammer effect didn’t happen, but they were still damn loud.
Nick made his way back to the warehouse office and looked out the window. Beyond the elevated highway, he saw great geysers of smoke and dirt blotting out the sky, and when the next salvo landed he saw what looked like small, individual volcanoes erupting. The flashes were brilliant, but quickly died. The mushrooms of smoke and debris did not; Nick saw flying lumber from smashed houses, tree limbs, and small vehicles flying through the air. Each salvo sent a concussion wave across the river, and the warehouse seemed to compress and expand with each blast.
How could anyone survive a bombardment like that?
From past experience, he knew it was possible.
The Freaks might lose a lot of people, but they would be waiting for the Star Marines—of that, he had no doubt.
But the enemy wasn’t stupid. They also had experience, and had learned that such a bombardment usually presaged an infantry assault; they also knew the Star Marines had reached the South Trimmer and would probably attack from there. Even before the 205s concluded their fire mission, rebel artillery from the north end of town began firing. Eighty millimeter rounds began dropping on both banks of the South Trimmer, and the Star Marines dived for cover. What glass remained in the windows was shattered and the giant garage-type doors were riddled with fragments.
Nick dashed back to the main warehouse floor and took cover with the rest of his squad. It was terrifying—he had never been in a situation where artillery from both sides was pounding the battlefield at the same time. He wasn’t much worried about the 205s, which were hitting several hundred yards to the north, but the 80s were zeroed in and coming down like hailstones.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Avila shouted.
“Where the hell we gonna go?” DuBose grunted. “We get out in the open, we’re cooked!”
“If this warehouse comes down, we’re still cooked.”
“He’s right, Sergeant!” Nick panted, his chest aching from concussion. “They have both sides of the river targeted. This warehouse will get hit, and when it does, it will burn. Anybody pinned under it will roast.”
DuBose stared at him with naked eyes, sweat pouring down from his helmet liner. Another salvo landed and the warehouse to the east of them splintered under a direct hit. DuBose pushed himself to his feet.
“Out the windows!” he shouted. “Get outside and belly up, then crawl toward the alley. Do not stand up!”
No one needed any urging. Within ten seconds everyone had scrambled out the windows, hitting the ground just as another salvo—maybe ten or twelve rounds—smashed into the street in front of the warehouse. The blast and shrapnel shredded part of the roof, which cascaded down over the equipment yard in pieces. Nick and the others crawled as quickly as they could toward the alley, making their way around random pieces of farming equipment that stood in their way. More shells erupted, and shrapnel swirled around them, along with debris from various sources.
It was like crawling through a tornado.
When they reached the fence that bordered the alley, they found that flying shrapnel had ripped a gap in the chain link.
“Get through that hole,” DuBose shouted, “and on the other side of the sheds! I don’t see anything hitting over there.”
The hole was big enough for one man at a time to crawl through, but the edges of the chain-link were sharp and ragged, ripping at their fatigues, which slowed them down. DuBose, once he was through, held the fence fragments open. When everyone was through except Nick and Cpl. Wiebe, an 80mm round slammed into a broken-down harvester and exploded six feet above the ground. Hot shrapnel sprayed the yard. Nick felt something hit the heel of his left boot—
Wiebe screamed.
Nick twisted around to look.
Wiebe lay six or eight feet away, both legs shredded. Blood spurted into the air and Nick saw white bone protruding from both thighs.
“Jesus!”
He scrambled toward the wounded corporal and seized him by the collar.
“Hold the wire open!” he shouted to DuBose.
“How bad is he?”
“Bad!”
Wiebe screamed again as Nick dragged him toward the gap in the fence. Two more shells smashed into the equipment yard, but several pieces of equipment blocked the shrapnel. Nick reached the gap and lifted Wiebe enough to get his head and shoulders through the hole; DuBose grabbed him under the arms and pulled while Nick lifted his legs as gingerly as possible to reduce the drag. For Wiebe, the agony was excruciating; he shrieked with every breath, but his rescuers had no choice. If they took time to do it carefully, the odds were high that another shell would kill all of them.
Leaving him behind was not an option.
Nick’s nerves were scoured by the time they got Wiebe through the fence. He crawled through next, then helped DuBose half carry, half drag Wiebe around behind the nearest shed. The rest of the squad was waiting there, along with a couple dozen men from Bravo Company. Bravo’s corpsman took over, gave Wiebe a pain killer, then called for an HVM.
Third Squad was now down to seven men.
Chapter 23
0620 Hours
The rebel bombardment ended only when Federation gunsleds located the batteries and called in their positions. The 205s shifted their fire to shut them down. The sleds reported several enemy guns destroyed, but could not confirm the same for all of them.
At least they were silent for the moment.
Hasty head counts estimated that some ninety Star Marines had been hit, and the battle of Three Rivers was just getting started. HVIs loaded up Echo Company and lifted them over the river, dropping them in a commercial district where the 205s had pretty much flattened everything, including much of the four-lane elevated highway. Delta and Charlie companies crossed the bridges and HVIs picked up Bravo to reinforce Echo.
Second Battalion, which now included Alpha Company, remained in reserve. Their orders were to assault the southern quadrant of Three Rivers, but not until the northern quadrant was in Federation hands.
Echo had fairly easy going for the first half hour. The 205s had smashed the business district north of the river, leaving a dozen square blocks nothing more than heaps of burning rubble. The streets were littered with rubbish, everything from splintered lumber to roofing tiles to upended vehicles to scattered groceries to smoldering dry goods to books and pencils and paper and bodies and broken weapons.
Civilian fuel stations burned like volcanoes fed by underground tanks, and shattered water mains provided the stark contrast of raging fire and gushing water in the same block. The Freaks had occupied certain strategic positions to defend the town, but had not fortified them nor built bunkers. When the barrage started, some had tried to run, but the 205s crushed the life out of them through sheer concussion; those who tried to hide were blown to bits by near- and direct hits. Blood, bodies, and body parts were strewn across the area, from the bottoms of ten-foot craters to the tops of the half-dozen trees that still stood.
Nick Walker saw it all with hollow eyes and a frozen lump in the pit of his stomach. He had been at war for three months and this was by far the worst devastation he had witnessed. He and the men of Echo gripped their weapons, tightened their jaws, and pushed through the shattered streets in search of the enemy. The going was difficult—every single street was pitted with deep craters and blocked by burning rubble. If not for the fires, it would have been a perfect defensive position for the rebels, only most of the rebels in this area had been killed. They came across rebel wounded, some of them hideous, and here and there had to kill a determined defender, but for the most part they just observed the closest thing to Hell they had ever seen.
They also encountered civilian bodies. Fortunately it was early Sunday morning and most businesses were closed, so the civilian body count was much lower than it might have been; even so, Nick was distressed to see Alpha 2 civilians who had died from Federation artillery. Two of the bodies he saw were children, another was a pet dog.
A few minutes before 0700, they reached the northern end of the target area. This was where the 205s had been hitting when they were retasked to shift their fire and take out the rebel 80s. For a few more blocks to the north, and twenty blocks to the west—right up to the North Trimmer—most of the town remained intact.
