by Rick Shelley
“What about the other group of Federation ships?” Truscott asked.
“Still on course. No, hold that. They’ve just shifted to Qspace.”
“We’ve bought ourselves a little more time,” Truscott said softly. Let’s hope it’s enough.
42
” We can’t count on our helmet displays or mapboards, not as far as current enemy positions are concerned,” David said. Lieutenant Ewing and Sergeant Jawad from Delta Company, Lead Sergeant Hal Avriel of Alpha, Prince William, and Commander Shrikes were gathered around David in the center of the Marines’ new defensive position. They had staked out an area four hundred yards long and seventyfive yards wide on and behind a low ridge.
“The fleet’s jumping in and out so often that we’re not getting constant position updates,” David explained.
“That was the admiral’s plan,” Ian said. “But the Federation ships are jumping in and out now as well, so their information about us will also be suspect.”
“Throw of the dice,” Bandar Jawad said. “Depends who’s got the most recent data and how much it’s changed since.”
“And how good the other side’s detection gear is,” the prince added. “We have to assume it’s as good as ours, perhaps better.”
“Sorry, sir, I disagree,” Ewing said. “I think we can say with considerable confidence that our electronics are definitely better. Detection range. On those occasions when we both moved into a fight with helmets operating, early on, our people always picked up the Feddies first. I doubt they can pick up passive radiation at all, even with the ships. As long as we restrict ourselves to the most essential of communications, we should be safe until they’re almost in our laps. Receivers open, no transmitting except in emergency conditions. Passive IR scan, no IR lights. That sort of thing.”
“I agree,” Ian said. “They were too ready to forgo electronics altogether. They must not have much faith in their gear.”
“We have another decision to make,” Ewing said. “We’ve got an excellent defensive position here, but we were too free with our complinks after we arrived. The Feddies likely know where we are. Do we stay here because it’s the best defensive position we’re likely to find, or do we move on to make it harder for the Feddies to find us?” He directed the question at Ian, but David was the first to speak.
“I&R usually calls for movement over fixed defense, but I’d suggest staying put, at least for the night. It’s getting dark. We have wounded who will make it impossible for us to move fast and silent. And there are still pockets of Feddies left from the original invasion. Tripping over an ambush in the dark is too likely now, and we’d really be on our own.”
Jawad and Avriel were quick to agree. “I think it’s the only way,” Avriel said.
Ian nodded. “So do I. At least for tonight. See to your men. Have them sleep and stand watch in turns, half and half in each fire team. Passive sensors only. No radio transmissions unless we’re under active attack. You men know the drill.”
David’s platoon slipped out of the defensive ring and planted snoops along approaches to the ridge. Then they came back in, to get a little rest before their next job.
Ewing’s headquarters platoon set up a command post on the east slope of the ridge, digging a shallow bunker into the bottom of the hill and reinforcing it with logs and rocks.
“It’s not a palace, but it might do for one night,” Ewing said when he brought Prince William and Commander Shrikes in.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Prince William said. “Your subtle way of suggesting that we keep out of the way?”
“Not at all, sir,” Ewing said, much too quickly.
“Wrong answer,” Ian said with a soft chuckle. Ewing looked confused, but Ian took him off the hook quickly. “Never mind. Lieutenant. We are the outsiders here.”
“Yes, sir,” Ewing said, almost stuttering. “Excuse me, I’d best take a look around the perimeter before it gets too dark.”
“Don’t shake the lad too much,” William told Ian once they were alone. “We get in a fight, he’ll need all the confidence he can muster.”
Ian sighed. “I know. There are times when humor is out of place. But I’m not used to this kind of situation. I’m still learning. That’s why I told Ewing that I wouldn’t interfere with him running the show.”
“If you hadn’t, I might have clobbered you to keep you out of it.”
Ian stared at him for a moment, then decided that the prince was serious. “That’s gentler than what some of the Marines might have done. And they’d have had the right of it, no matter what King’s Regs say.”
“What do you think’s going on up there?” William asked, gesturing upward with a thumb. “You’ve known Truscott longer than I have.”
“We still have a fleet. After eight hours or more, that’s quite a statement. Five dreadnoughts and six escorts against our lot.”
“Truscott has certainly proved the value of his new tactics,” William said. “I just hope he wins clear here to enjoy the fruits of his labors.”
“Him and the rest of us,” Ian said. “I hate to think that it all comes down to Long John’s reaction to the admiral’s dispatches.”
“You don’t think much of the First Lord of the Admiralty?”
“Let’s just say that I don’t know him as well as I know Admiral Truscott. I don’t have any cause to doubt Raleigh’s abilities, but he’s never seemed particularly suited to innovation or spurofthemoment planning.”
“You may be right, or we’d likely have had tests run on this Qspace routine years ago,” the prince said.
“We get back to Buckingham, the Admiralty will certainly come under close scrutiny.” Ian noted that while the prince had avoided using the word “if,” he had also shied away from “when.”
Josef found himself shivering uncontrollably. He wasn’t injured, having come out of this smash even better than the one back on Buckingham. The temperature was seventy degrees Fahrenheit, so it wasn’t cold.
He had his flight suit and helmet on, and that should have had him roasting. The flight suit was a major handicap moving through the jungle; it was heavy, bulky, and not particularly limber; but he needed its thermal shielding. He didn’t want to stand out like a bonfire to enemy IR detectors.
The Marines had treated him right. One of their medical orderlies had given him a close onceover, even though they had real casualties to care for.
I’m proper useless here, he told himself as he got the shivering fit under control. Fish out of water. He was armed, but only with a slugthrowing pistol and his survival knife. The pistol had only the nine rounds in the magazine. He didn’t carry spares. He hadn’t even fired the gun in months, since his last annual appearance on the range to qualify with it.
I’m getting to be a bloody wastrel with fighters. They’ll have me flying a desk if I’m not careful. At the moment, that wasn’t the worst possible fate, but he knew he wouldn’t be happy anywhere but in a fighter cockpit. He curled up on the ground in a fetal position, still shivering.
Kate, I hope you made it okay. He had tried to avoid thinking of her after his own fighter was blown.
At least six other Spacehawks had been lost in the battle. He had heard that much over his complink while he waited for pickup, but he hadn’t heard who the pilots were, or even which squadrons they were from.
By the time Josef got around to thinking that it was going to be a long, miserable night, he had slid into what was almost sleep, an uncomfortable, semiconscious state that made the minutes pass like hours.
Avoiding helmet complinks was no great hardship for veteran I&R Marines. Special operations often called for electronic silence. David cued Alfie, Jacky, Roger, and Sean to go out with him on patrol. They loaded themselves down with mines and snoopers, and slipped down the western face of the ridge.
Before they left, David briefed his companions as completely as he could, spelling out precisely where they were going and what they were going to do. While
the veterans scarcely needed the blueprint, Sean was too new for David to presume that he would know without initial coaching.
David led the way. He curved south, planning on a significant detour, hoping that the Federation troops would be concentrating too much on the direct route between them. The red blips had remained in one place for hours. The patrol was based on the assumption that the Feddies had made camp for the night.
Intelligence and Reconnaissance… and sometimes a bit of a commando raid. Like now. David smiled.
This patrol had been his idea. Lieutenant Ewing had accepted the idea, almost gratefully. Commander Shrikes and Prince William had both seemed pleased at the prospect as well.
“It should cut down the odds against us, at least a little,” David had told the others. “Make these new arrivals more cautious.”
“Just don’t get carried away,” the prince had said. “You’ll do us a lot more good back here safe and healthy when it’s over than you would out there, dead or hurt. We don’t know when we’ll be able to get any medevac down.”
“I’m aware of that, sir,” David assured the prince. “That’s why I’ll only take four picked men, the best I’ve got for this sort of job.”
The team had been out for an hour before David raised his hand, fist clenched, to signal for the team to stop.
Now, if my memory hasn’t gone south, we’re almost there. David motioned his men off to the right, spreading them out along the path. Each man knew his assignment. Once the others had time to reach their positions, David knelt down and started his own share of the work, planting one snoop and a half dozen small land mines that would be triggered when the snoop spotted human movement across the arc.
The mines went into the underbrush, aimed out over the path to provide overlapping kill zones. David’s batch would cover a stretch of thirty yards. The other Marines set up similar kill zones along the path.
The computers running the system were programmed to permit intruders to get well along before the mines were detonated. Whichever end of the string the enemy came from, the snoops would wait to trigger the mines until the enemy’s lead element reached the far end of the last kill zone, or until the rearguard came even with the first snoop.
One by one, the other Marines ran back down the path, crouched low. David counted, and he touched each man on the leg as he went past to let them know that he had seen him. Alfie was the last. Once Alfie went by, David got up and followed. The others waited for him fifty yards from the end of the boobytrapped stretch of path.
This was the predictably dangerous moment. For a few seconds, while David activated the snoops that would control the mines, he would be visible to anyone using electronic detection equipment.
The others gathered around David, all of them close enough to see what he was doing as he turned on the portable transmitter and keyed in the sevencharacter code that activated the system. Quick bleeps confirmed the activation. David shut down the transmitter as soon as the last confirmation sounded. He stood and waved the team on, back toward the ridge.
David slept easily, but lightly, after he brought his men back from patrol. He scarcely noticed the discomfort of simply spreading out on the ground to sleep. It was too familiar. His field skin kept him warm, his helmet all the pillow he needed. If he were wakened abruptly, the rifle at his side would be in his hands before his eyes were open. When he woke on his own, as he did frequently, it was different.
There was a moment of awareness. He would open his eyes without moving, look around, listen. As soon as he could assure himself that nothing was amiss, he would slide back into sleep.
Half an hour before dawn, David got up and prowled behind the line of men on the ridge, then went down to the makeshift command bunker. Lieutenant Ewing was just waking, sitting across the entrance to the bunker. He stood and gestured David away from it.
“I didn’t expect you up so soon,” Ewing said.
David shrugged. “My body decided it was time.”
“You got your packets planted?”
“Yes, sir. Unless the Feddies change their route, they should run into our surprise no more a few minutes after they start out.”
Bandar Jawad came across the slope toward them. In the predawn darkness, his figure was no more than a light green ghost, the faceplate of his mask slightly reflective.
“A quiet night,” Bandar said around a yawn. “More than I expected.”
“Let’s hope for a peaceful day,” Ewing said. “I’d just as soon save any fighting until after we deliver our guests to more senior officers.”
The two sergeants nodded. They understood completely: Not on my watch. They wouldn’t want to be remembered in connection with the death or capture of the king’s youngest brother.
“They get a break upstairs, I imagine the admiral will send a shuttle for the prince and our casualties,”
David said. “Leastways, I hope he will.” He glanced along the slope toward the bunker. Neither the prince nor Commander Shrikes had come out yet. “We’d be in a lot better shape without them.”
“Be nice to get Gaffer Chou to the medics as well,” Bandar said. “Save him a lot of grief later.”
Both of Chou’s legs had been shot up and broken. Chou had been treated with a variety of medpatches, both for pain and to fight infection. He had remained unconscious, or close to it, since. But if the Marines couldn’t get him to a trauma tube soon… The nanoscrubbers could only do so much without the more complete molecular machinery of a trauma tube. Even if Gaffer didn’t die, the legs might deteriorate so badly that they would have to be amputated. That would mean weeks in a trauma tube while the legs were regenerated, and more weeks of therapy before he would be able to function normally again.
Chou’s men, the survivors of the squad he had brought down to protect Prince William, were arranged around the bujiker as an inner line of defense. Prince William and Ian Shrikes were their primary responsibility.
“Let’s spend the morning improving our positions here,” Ewing said. “Unless we get new orders, we’re still supposed to dig in and wait.”
“We stay here instead of looking for a different spot?” David asked.
Ewing nodded. “Moving would kill Chou. Dig in and sit tight, and hope that friends get to us before the other lot.”
“We’d best send a detail for water as well,” Bandar said. “We may have to go a mile for that. We get locked into this position, we could run short in another day.”
“Work it out with the other sergeants, Bandar,” Ewing said. “Maybe two men from each platoon, a squad to run cover for them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I wish we could afford the time and noise to give us clear kill zones around this place,” Ewing said. The main ridge faced the known concentration of Federation forces. Two lower, gentler, hills blocked off the sides—somewhat. But there was little in the way of natural protection across the remaining side of the area. “Get some quick ramparts in across the east.” Ewing gestured.
“If we’re staying put, we have to do something about that side,” Bandar said. “Bring down a few trees, something to give a little cover to the men there. Plant a few mines out far enough to slow an attack. The other sides will have to make do with what nature provided, but nature didn’t provide a damn thing for us on the east.”
“Do it quickly, and as quietly as possible,” Ewing told him.
“Right, sir.”
David glanced along the slope as two men came out of the bunker. “Looks like our VIPs are up,” he said softly.
Ewing turned and nodded, then started toward them. Bandar and David followed.
“We made it through the night,” Prince William said.
“Yes, sir,” Ewing agreed. “I think it’s time we had a look at a mapboard to see what sort of data we’ve got.”
“Inside?” Ian suggested, jerking a thumb toward the bunker.
“Yes, sir. That will mute the electronics somewhat. A little bit of luck and they migh
t not pick it up at all.”
Five men crowded inside the narrow dugout. Ewing unfolded his mapboard and turned it on. Their own position was clear from the triangle showing the position of the mapboard. The group of red blips representing the Federation’s soldiers west of them was a little closer than it had been the day before.
“Right where they’ll have to stumble on our surprises if they come this way,” David pointed out. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was a second group of red blips, to the north, and only a little more distant.
“That other lot must have done a night march,” Bandar said. “They were at least six miles farther off the last we looked.” They had been so far away that the Marines had given them little thought.
“Coming toward us,” the prince noted. “They must be acting in concert.”
“They’re coming for us,” Bandar said.
“And it won’t take them all that long, once they start moving again,” Ewing said. “You’d best get those details working right now, Sergeant.”
43
Admiral Truscott was feeling his age. He had lost count of the coffee and tea he had consumed in the last twenty hours. It was hard enough to keep track of the time. He had to stare at a clock and concentrate for the time to register. He had managed a couple of short naps, but it was hardly a down payment on the sleep he really needed. Tension, adrenaline, and willpower had been enough to carry him only so far. Beyond that point, the inevitable physical reaction had set in.
On the flag bridge of Sheffield, everyone seemed to be suffering the same waning alertness. Sending people off two or three at a time to rest hadn’t done much good. They were all too acutely aware of their vulnerability to sleep even when they had the opportunity.
