by John Bowers
And so did the rebels.
As Echo Company, by platoons, squads, and fire teams, began moving down streets that were not destroyed, rebel lasers and machine guns opened fire. Men scrambled for cover, diving behind parked vehicles and smashing storefront windows to take cover inside. In less than a minute the fighting became intense. Streaks of laser and streams of tracer whined down empty streets, smashing glass, splintering wood, and chipping masonry. Chips and shards flew in all directions. Hundreds of men were suddenly locked in desperate combat, yet not a soul could be seen out in the open, as if two invisible, supernatural armies were slugging it out for control of the planet.
Charlie Company moved up from the east and Bravo from the south; to the west, Delta Company angled toward the North Trimmer in an attempt to flank rebel positions in the north quadrant, but were stopped cold. The cool morning was filled with flying lead and whining steel; vehicles burned and exploded, buildings crumbled under the assault, coming apart a little at a time. Helmet comms crackled with orders, wounded men shouted for corpsmen, rifles roared and machine guns chattered, grenades flashed and popped, lasers shrieked and chirped; hot, empty brass cartridges rang like tiny bells as they bounced along the ground. Parabola guns, recently set up in the warehouse district, began firing support missions as requested by the Star Marines, adding their flash and crash to the inferno.
But nothing seemed to have much effect against the entrenched rebels.
The rebels also had mortars. They were not P-guns, but old-fashioned, single-tube stovepipes; even so, they were still deadly and rained down on Star Marine positions. Federation gunsleds banked and circled over the scene, diving occasionally on known rebel positions, but then something unprecedented happened—for the first time in the war, the rebels used a weapon the Star Marines didn’t know they had—shoulder-fired, armor-piercing rocket launchers. Three gunsleds were shot down within four minutes and the others pulled back to regroup, leaving the Star Marines without eyes in the sky or aerial fire support.
Insect drones still worked, but in an urban setting they were poor substitutes for sleds—in this setting, drones operated by pure guesswork, like sniffing bloodhounds hunting for a trail. Once they found a target, it could be shelled or assaulted, but finding it was the problem.
In the end, the battle of Three Rivers was reduced to a single primary component—men on foot fighting their way street by street, building by building, trying to dig out the enemy. In the first hour, Echo lost six men; in the second hour, they lost nine more; and in the third, seven.
Those were just the fatalities—the count of wounded was even higher.
Third Platoon’s corpsman, Cpl. Starling, was killed just after 0915.
By noon, Echo Company’s roster was cut in half. For the price they paid, they had advanced exactly three blocks.
1115 Hours
“Ammo check!” DuBose ordered. “What’ve you got?”
First Squad had worked its way one block north and half a block west of the rest of 3rd Platoon. They had taken cover in a hardware store with a large parking lot in back and a smaller one in front. Most of the windows were broken and several were completely blown out.
Nick Walker wiped sweat and grime off his face and did a quick inventory; he had used all the magazines on his belt and about a third of those in his bandoleers. He still had five grenades—one concussion, three frags, and a plasma.
“I have twelve magazines,” he reported.
“Nine,” said Rudy, who only wore one bandoleer.
“Eight,” said Kopshevar.
“Nine,” said Carlson.
“Four,” said Avila.
DuBose looked at Clark, who manned the SAW. “What about you, CC?”
“Six belts,” Clark said.
DuBose turned to Nick.
“Can you share a couple of magazines with the others?”
Nick pulled four magazines from his bandoleer and slid two each across the floor to Avila and DuBose. That left him with eight, not counting the one in his rifle, and brought the others to near parity. He frowned as he wondered how soon they might get resupply.
He peered out the window again. He was crouched against a load-bearing beam that was thick enough to stop anything smaller than a 40mm shell. DuBose had rearranged the squad, sending Avila to cover Clark and Carlson, who manned the SAW—leaving Nick with Kopshevar and Rudy Aquino—and they were strung out along the hardware store windows. DuBose himself moved from one team to the other as necessity dictated.
The street ahead of them looked bleak. At the intersection fifty yards away, two surface cars were burning after being hit by a rebel mortar shell. The second floor of a small hotel was burning and a rebel machine gun was set up on the ground floor. The MG had been trading fire with them for five or six minutes, and the only way to silence it appeared to be a flanking maneuver, but they had no angle on it. Every time one of them moved, the gun opened up, and supporting rifle fire kept their heads down when the gun wasn’t firing.
“I don’t think we’re gonna get it from here,” DuBose said. “Third Squad is moving up the next street over, so maybe they can get an angle on it.”
“We could duck out the back, maybe,” Nick suggested. “If we can get across that parking lot, CC could cover us with the SAW while we try to flank it. I could try it if someone wants to watch my back.”
“That parking lot is wide open,” DuBose reminded him, “and we don’t know what’s to the north of it. You would be exposed for a long time. And what the hell are you gonna do by yourself?”
“I’ve got one plasma grenade left.”
“Are you crazy?” Kopshevar was aghast. “You have to be in a foxhole to use one of those! There is no way you can throw one far enough to avoid the blast. Don’t you remember boot camp?”
“Yeah, vaguely. But we aren’t doing any good here, and that gun is going to slaughter Third Squad if they come within range.”
But DuBose was shaking his head.
“No way, Walker. It’s too dangerous.”
“Then what the hell good are these goddamn grenades if we can’t use them?”
“You heard what Kopycat said. They’re for open terrain only, and you have to be in a hole to use them. They have a blast radius of fifty yards, and it’s pure heat. You’ll be roasted if you try to use it under these conditions.”
“Sergeant, there’s all kinds of shit I can duck down behind…”
“Yeah, and all that shit will burn when that thing pops. Including you.”
Nick grimaced in frustration. He peered around the edge of his beam to see if anything outside had changed. He was met by a stream of tracers that ricocheted off the beam and splattered against the display racks behind him.
“Well, fuck!”
CC Clark answered the enemy tracers with a burst of his own. The SAW sounded like ripping canvas when it fired, and brass empties clattered across the floor around him.
DuBose was on his helmet comm for updates; before he finished talking, two rebel mortar rounds landed in the street fifteen yards away. The squad heard them coming and flattened out as they erupted. Hot steel fragments sprayed the storefront and blasted through the interior, shredding shelves and merchandise. Nick peeked up again as smoke curled into the air from the fresh craters.
“Anybody know any funny stories?”
“Jesus, Walker! Is everything a joke to you?”
“No. That’s why I want to hear a funny story.”
“I got one,” Avila chirped from forty feet away.
“Is it dirty?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want to hear it. Hey, Sergeant, what about those P-guns? Why can’t we get them to drop a few rounds on that hotel?”
“I already asked the Cap’m that. He’s looking into it.”
“Looking into it? What the hell is this, a police investigation? Is he going to send us a memo next? Why can’t we get some goddamn fire support?”
“I think some of
the P-guns were hit by rebel artillery, and the rest are tied up supporting other platoons.”
“Well what about us? We’re hanging out naked here!”
Nick exposed himself for a few seconds, pouring a stream of full metal jacket toward the hotel. He ducked back just as the enemy gun answered with another sustained burst that filled the air around them with what sounded like buzzing hornets.
“What we really need,” he told the others, “is air support. But no, the fucking Congress decided we don’t need that. After all, these Freaks are just farmers! I guess they think we’re fighting people who carry nothing but pitchforks.” He spat on the floor. “Fucking politicians! If I ever meet one of those pricks face to face, I’m gonna spit on him!”
“Calm down, Walker! You’re not helping anybody.”
“Fuck. FUCK!!!”
Nick pressed his back against the support beam and peeled off his bandoleers. The one that still held magazines he laid on the floor beside him. He studied the empty one, which was about four feet long, and fingered the hooks on each end that were designed to secure it to his belt.
“What are you doing?” DuBose asked him.
“Checking it out. When the war is over, I think I can design a better one. In five years I’ll be a rich man.”
DuBose grunted in disgust and looked away. He got on his helmet comm again to check on his fire support request.
Breathing heavily, Nick pulled the plasma grenade off his belt and studied that as well. It was larger than a regular grenade and weighed about two pounds. The shape was oblong, like a sweet potato—nine inches long and about five in circumference. Like a normal grenade, it had a pin, but unlike a normal grenade, did not have an arming lever. Once the pin was pulled, the timer started. For that reason, pulling the pin was about as easy as pulling a tooth—you had to tug at it.
Nick turned the thing over. Hooks on the top were used to attach it to a canteen belt, and he felt his pulse increase as his idea came together. Taking the bandoleer in one hand and the grenade in the other, he aligned the hooks on each. They were about the same distance apart. Tentatively, he joined the hooks together and discovered that they matched. It wasn’t an exact fit, but close enough. With an intense expression, he reached into his canteen belt and pulled out a roll of plastic tape—tape had a thousand uses on the battlefield, from patching uniforms to patching wounds when nothing else was available—and ripped off a strip. He quickly wound the tape around the joined hooks, pressed it tight, then ripped off another strip to reinforce the first.
DuBose was still talking on his command channel, his back turned and head ducked. Nick glanced at him, then laid his rifle on the ground below the window. He chinned his own helmet on the squad channel.
“CC, cover me! Put fire on that gun and don’t let up. The rest of you, too.”
He got to his feet, still behind the pillar, and glanced at CC Clark.
“Right now!” he shouted.
Clark opened fire with his Squad Automatic Weapon. His tracers streaked across the sixty or seventy yards toward the hotel and ripped into the building at kneecap level. The rest of the squad, except for DuBose, joined in. The enemy gunners ducked until the firing stopped…only it didn’t stop. Nick leaped out the window into the narrow parking lot along the street and raced at full speed toward a burned-out vehicle fifteen yards away. He dived behind it, jerked the pin out of the plasma grenade, then stood up and began swinging the bandoleer over his head like a hammer thrower at a track-and-field meet.
Clark had to change magazines, then continued firing; the rest of the squad kept up a steady barrage as Nick counted in his head. The plasma grenade had a ten-second fuse, and if he waited too long, he would vaporize not only himself, but everyone in the squad. He swung the bandoleer faster and faster to gain momentum, counting all the while. When his count reached seven, he released the bandoleer and the grenade, heaving them directly toward the hotel window. Instantly he sprinted back toward the hardware store and dived headfirst through the window; landing hard, he skidded ten or twelve feet across the concrete surface, cutting himself on dozens of razor-sharp glass fragments.
“Get down!” he shouted as he hit the floor—and not a second too soon.
The interior of the hardware store flashed white, brighter than any natural or artificial light, and a wave of heat washed over him. Seventy yards behind him, the hotel simply vanished, vaporized by what looked like a nuclear blast. Plasma killed with heat, but not radiation, and anyone within forty or fifty yards of the target would either catch fire or be converted to atoms.
Nick sat up slowly and looked out the window behind him. A heat mushroom was already rising from where the hotel had been, but the enemy gun, gunners, and support troops were simply gone, vanished, as if they had never existed.
Sgt. DuBose, shaking like a leaf, got slowly to his feet. He peered across the parking lot at the intersection, where every building in sight was either gone or blazing. The rest of the squad were also on their feet, gazing out at the devastation. Several of them muttered epithets. Avila was giggling.
DuBose turned to look at Nick, who sat on the floor with blood flowing from minor cuts. DuBose was still trembling.
“Walker, you asshole! I ought to ask the Cap’m to starcourt you! You disobeyed my direct order!”
Nick, weak with relief, grinned.
“Go ahead, Sergeant. Since you’re still alive, you can do that.”
“Trouble is, once the evidence is presented at a starcourt, you would probably get a fucking medal instead.”
“Well, I don’t want a medal, so you better hide the evidence.”
DuBose stared at him a moment, then shook his head and bent over to pick up his rifle.
“Okay, guys, pick up your shit. We gotta move.”
Chapter 24
1900 Hours
Progress was slow and intermittent. With 1st Battalion bogged down in the northern quadrant of Three Rivers, Lt. Col. Dietrich amended his strategy and ordered 2nd Battalion to assault the southern quadrant before the northern quadrant was secure. This forced rebel units in the south to defend instead of supporting those units north of the river.
The southern quadrant was mostly residential and less densely built-up than the commercial district. Second Battalion drove north in three parallel prongs that smashed rebel defenses in their way and isolated the rest; this placed troops on the south bank of the South Trimmer just before the suns set, and freed up the artillery to support 1st Battalion.
Echo Company, now down to ninety-five men and supported by fresh gunsleds, managed to inch west along streets in the commercial district until they were within sight of the North Trimmer, which flowed south and formed a natural defensive barrier. Late in the afternoon they received extra ammunition, but not as much as they needed. It was, however, enough to get them a few blocks closer to the river, and by dark they were only two blocks away.
And almost out of ammo again.
With the darkness, as if both sides were exhausted, came a lull in the fighting.
*
“How much longer is this gonna last?” complained Rudy Aquino as they crouched in the ruins of an auto shop. Directly across the street was a wrecked fuel depot, and across the intersection stood some kind of office building. Down the street to their right stretched a line of shops that sold a variety of household goods.
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Kopshevar said.
“I only got one magazine left,” said Billy Avila. “If we don’t get some more soon, we’ll have to throw rocks at the fuckers.”
“Working on that,” DuBose said. “Lt. Jaeger says both battalions are low on ammo. Nobody expected the Freaks to fight this hard, and we’ve used almost everything.”
“Great planning,” said Carlson. “Where the hell are Third and Fourth Battalions? Maybe we could get something from them.”
“Third Battalion is still working down south along the mountains,” DuBose replied. “Fourth Battali
on is covering our rear.”
“I think our rear could use a little help,” Nick said. “Maybe they ought to get off their ass and lend a hand.”
“They’re all split up. Most of them are doing occupation duty on ground we’ve already captured, like Goshen and Cutler Crossing.”
“What the hell for? Let the Fed Infantry do that!”
“Not my call, Walker, but I know what you mean.”
“I got a question,” said CC Clark. “Has Fourth Battalion done any fighting on this planet? Seems to me that First and Second have been carrying all the water. I’ll bet the Fourth hasn’t lost a man since we landed.”
DuBose shrugged. “You could be right. Anyway, I think it’s gonna be a long night, so get something to eat while you can.”
Kopshevar brightened.
“Great idea, Sarge! I’ll have a double shit sandwich with a shingle on the side. What would you like, Nick? The Sarge is buying.”
“I’ll have the same. Only I want extra flies.”
“Oh, I forgot the flies. Me, too, Sarge—extra flies!”
Kopshevar looked over his shoulder.
“What about you, Avila? You want a shit sandwich?”
“Avila doesn’t want a shit sandwich,” Nick said. “He doesn’t like bread.”
DuBose couldn’t keep himself from grinning.
“Fuck you guys. Shut up and eat.”
Nick pulled a ration out of his pack and opened it. In the near dark he couldn’t make out the label, but found it to contain cold pork and rice with rye crackers in a cellophane wrapping. If the enemy hadn’t been nearby, he would have heated it, but that was hardly an option now. He dumped the contents into his mess kit and began to eat. It tasted surprisingly wonderful.
Momentarily refreshed, he checked the contents of his canteen and discovered enough water for a quick swallow—but they were getting low on water as well.
