Ethan clicked on. “We just heard from Liz Town. They’re reporting a large force of Empire troops, two companies on bikes, who initiated a parley. Their leader told the Lizzies to join or die. Liz Town says they wanted the Confederation to be aware of the OpFor’s location, but no word yet on the Lizzie response to the Empire’s demand. They did say they had major developments going on and would advise us of the details later. I’ll ask what they’re going to do, when there’s time. The Empire unit then moved on, heading northeast. That bearing will take them to the company we found. They’re headed toward us.”
Cassy had to stop herself from punching the wall. Damn Liz Town and their politics. Why would the Empire send two companies there? Liz Town could have chewed up that many enemies and spit them out. Sending so few showed that the Empire had no immediate plans to attack Liz Town, and also that they weren’t concerned about the Lizzies riding out to attack them. It would be nice if the Clan’s supposed allies would at least fill her in on what they were doing. If they were joining the Empire, she needed to know. Though, the fact that the Empire’s troops moved on was maybe a hopeful sign.
She clicked her radio and said, “Copy that. Send one scout team to Liz Town. Stay out of sight of any Empire troops but find out what’s going on, whether Liz opens its gates to the Empire or fights, anything that might give us a heads up on whether we need to worry about Liz Town becoming a threat.”
“Copy that. So what do we do about our own little Empire visitors?”
That was a great question. The Empire company bearing down on Clanholme and the two chatting up Liz Town were probably from the same battalion. “Ethan, get Michael to delegate rallying our defenses and send him to Charlie One.” She needed to talk to Michael before deciding anything, and time was short.
Before Ethan acknowledged the order, she added, “And have Lititz send their company of Taggart’s troops to Manheim, and ask Manheim to send their own guys to meet up with Michael en route. Those Empire troops coming from Liz Town might hit Manheim on the way, so leapfrogging the units like that gives us more troops without leaving Manheim defenseless.”
“Copy that.”
Two minutes later, Michael came bursting through the door and scrambled up the stairs. Cassy watched as he came up, his head appearing in the opening, followed quickly by the rest of him. “I’m here,” he said simply. Wartime Michael was a very different person than peacetime Michael.
“There’s a company of Empire troops coming fast. If we engage them, how long until the two bike companies sitting at Liz Town could get here to reinforce them?”
Michael’s eyebrows went up. He hadn’t heard about the Liz Town visitors, it seemed, but he didn’t waste time with needless questions. “An hour and a half from Liz Town on bikes, with a two-hundred-foot rise at the end. They’d get here tired.”
“What are the odds the two companies at Liz Town aren’t tied to this company, or that there are more units nearby?”
Michael shrugged. “I can almost guarantee they aren’t attacking us with a single company. Either they’ll probe us for weaknesses before the main body arrives, without fully engaging us, or maybe parley to make demands. Or they’re waiting for the other two companies to catch up. We have to plan for the latter and hope for the former.”
“Alright. Get our scouts out there, so we aren’t blindsided by another unit. Now, should we meet the Empire in the middle, or defend Clanholme?”
Michael didn’t miss a beat. “Ideally, we could meet them out there so we aren’t fighting them in here. We have elderly. We have kids. Fighting here endangers them all. But we can’t intercept the Empire troops, so we need to set up here.”
“Why can’t we intercept them out there?” Cassy rubbed her jaw. Her mind ran through different scenarios, but she lacked Michael’s training and experience, dammit.
“If our scouts report other Empire units inbound, we’d be far away engaging the first enemy we noticed. Clanholme could fall to the new Empire units without much of a fight. There’s another option, though.”
“Spit it out. The clock is ticking.”
“We hit the company with our light armor—the battlecars—and some supporting cavalry. That leaves most of our strength here and gives us tactical flexibility.”
Cassy shook her head. “No. If we use our battlecars now, they’ll know we have them, and they’ll copy them. This is just the opening salvo, so we shouldn’t show all our cards yet. Ethan has all the allies sending out scouts, so we’re covered north, east, and south against being blindsided.”
Michael nodded once, curtly. “What are our orders, then?”
“Ready the troops. We march out to meet the Empire, despite the risk. That creek just north and east of the abandoned equipment plant out that way is heavily wooded on both sides of the road. Station them there, spread out for ambush—we’ll have cover, but the enemy won’t. I’m coming, too, but this is your show once we’re in the field.”
Cassy then moved quickly to the stairs, closely followed by Michael. Her decision was risky, no doubt about it, but if she could spare their homes and children the risks of a battle in their front yard, she would. She hadn’t seen Frank yet, but she didn’t relish the idea of handing the responsibility for this decision off to anyone else, anyway. Some things were just the actual leader’s responsibility. She’d lead, and from the front like a proper leader should, even if command in the field went to Michael.
* * *
Frank hobbled up to the assembled Clan force and spotted Cassy. He handed his horse’s reins to someone and hobbled as fast as he could up to her, and grabbed her by the elbow. All around them, the Clan’s warriors prepared for battle. Yet another battle, and yet another time this reckless woman wanted to rush into the fighting. “Dammit, Cassy. Didn’t you learn from your last brush with death? The quarry battle wasn’t that long ago. You’re going to get yourself killed. We need you alive!”
Cassy glared at him, lips tight. Then she said, “I don’t lead from the rear, and I don’t ask people to take chances I won’t.” She turned to the assembled fighters, two hundred of them including Taggart’s soldiers, and shouted, “Mount up.”
“Fine,” Frank said, loosening his grip, “then I’m going, too.”
“With one foot? I don’t have time to argue, Frank. Stay here.” She yanked her arm free from him and stomped to her horse, vaulting into the saddle.
“My wife is going with you, but I can’t? Sorry, Cassy, but you’ll have to tie me up to keep me from coming. Someone has to try to see that you don’t get yourself killed.”
“I don’t need anyone holding my hand, Frank. If you want to come, then come. Whatever happens to you out there is on your hands, but either lead, follow, or stay out of my way. Riders, move out.” Cassy nudged her horse into a trot, through the north food forest toward the open lands beyond, the Clan’s army trailing behind her.
Frank hobbled back to his horse, thanked the woman holding his reins, and mounted carefully. He slid his leg stump into the custom-made stirrup and tightened the strap that kept his leg in place even when the horse was at full gallop. So long as he didn’t fall off his horse, it worked great. If he fell, he’d have to reach the quick-release that Dean had rigged for the stirrup or he’d be dragged. When seated securely, he nudged his mount into the line, trotting perhaps a quarter of the way back from Cassy at the column head.
They wound through the northern food forest, Cassy leading them around the many traps they had placed in the forest for invaders. Frank quickly lost himself in admiring the woods, a forest-by-design.
A nudge to his elbow snapped him out of his musings just as he exited the food forest into the grasslands beyond. He turned to look and saw his wife, Mary. “Hey, sweetie,” he said, smiling broadly.
Mary didn’t smile back, but gave him a wink. “I caught up to you by accident,” she said, “while I was zoned out thinking about that food forest.”
Frank nodded and his smile widened to an open
grin. He had been doing the same, of course. “I feel like I could spend a lifetime watching every plant, every bug, every critter, and still not understand everything going on in there. It feels like looking at a miracle.”
Mary looked up into the sky and closed her eyes, the warm sun bathing her in its brilliance. “I know what you mean. Everything in Clanholme is like that, you know? So much going on that we don’t see, but can almost perceive. Sensed more than known. Felt, almost. And now it goes out beyond, too, into these fields all around us. Soon wheat or rice or quinoa, flowers or clover or tubers—they’ll all start coming up, from the cuttings and seed bombs we threw out. And not just here. I heard other settlements are starting to copy us.”
Frank smiled, and she opened her eyes in time to see him gazing at her. She grinned back at him.
He said, “After we start harvesting all that, we’ll be able to feed three times as many people as we have now. Plant another forest. Build another Clanholme, maybe on the very ground we’re crossing now. Self-sufficient little miracle farms spreading out over all these hills. It’s like we’re standing on the edge of something really important, watching it unfold in front of us. It’s wonderful.”
“That’s why we’re riding out to fight. Don’t forget it, okay? We’re doing this for Hunter. And the rest of the Clanners and their kids, and hundreds of other people, thousands, who survived that first terrible winter, they’re all the reason we fight.”
Frank thought of the many children back at Clanholme and nodded. They were worth the losses the Clan was about to suffer. “I know. I just can’t wait till this is over,” he said. “I want to get back to being a real dad. Between my duties and the craziness of spring sowing…”
“Frank, I know you don’t spend as much time with him as you’d like to, but you’re a great father to him. I know he looks up to you. A lot of the kids do.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. He cleared his throat and gazed off into the distance. “Who would have thought, a year ago, that we’d be riding horses to go fight a battle on American soil against Americans?”
Mary took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she replied, “Ethan and Cassy. They both did. And thank goodness for that, or we’d all be dead now, probably. Cassy wanted a place to get away from the world, and Ethan thought alien lizards were taking over the government. We lucked out, meeting up with those crazies.”
Frank smiled. “Don’t forget Michael—he just wanted to forget the violence, go out in the woods whenever he could and travel on his Marine woodcraft. Crazy isn’t all bad.”
She nodded and they spent the next few minutes in small talk. For a moment, it was nice to forget the terrible purpose for which they rode out and the danger they’d soon face.
Along the way, the Clan and Army forces were joined by two dozen more fighters from Taj Mahal. That was most of the smaller settlement’s able-bodied adults, Frank knew, and he rode out to greet them as they approached the line, filled them in on what was going on, and directed them to take up the rear in the column to stay together, or meld in as they found open spots if they wished. They moved to the rear of the column as a cohesive group.
It was reassuring to know they had such willing allies, even if they couldn’t contribute as many troops as some others. They were good friends of Clanholme, these displaced first and second-generation immigrants from India, who had settled here by Clan invitation and were rapidly mastering Cassy’s methods.
Shortly after the Taj Mahal contingent joined them, Taggart’s company from Manheim showed up. Right after that, a couple dozen bike-mounted troops from Renfar joined, most armed with civilian hunting rifles. Half of Renfar’s group were paramedics, nurses, and doctors. They brought a lot of corpsman gear and field surgery equipment, along with a small two-wheeled wagon loaded with the kind of cheap ten-by-ten pavilions Frank used to buy for summer barbeques. Now they would serve as field hospitals for the Confederation forces. The Renfar troops also brought a second wagon, covered with a tarp. Frank assumed those were more medical supplies.
He made a mental note to set up an ongoing paramedics-level training program for the Clan and her allies. Those paramedics were damn valuable, and there weren’t enough of them. Clanholme itself had only a couple, including Lance Corporal Sturm, one of Michael’s Marine Corps fighters, but at least she was a qualified field medic. Renfar was about to become a medical school for the rest of them, if Frank could arrange it.
The column lead stopped on the crest of a low hill, and word came down the line to spread out to either side. Showtime was approaching.
As Frank reached the crest to join Michael and Cassy, he saw a broad, low valley full of brushes, scattered about with trees. On the other side, perhaps a quarter mile away, stood another low hill. On that hill were more troops than he could easily count, sitting atop bicycles. They made no effort to run, dammit. So, this valley would be the host for this Clan-versus-Empire party, it seemed. They hadn’t time to deploy for ambush, unfortunately.
“Come on,” Frank said to Mary as he dismounted, “let’s go get good seats for the show.”
Instead of answering, Mary got off her horse, grabbed him, and wrapped her arms around him. She rested her face in the crook of his neck. Startled, Frank gently stroked her hair and rested his face on the top of her head. He could smell the comforting, welcome smell of his wife, and suddenly wrapped his arms around her, too, squeezing tightly.
“Stay safe, my love,” he muttered into her hair, and on his cheek, he felt her lightly nod. Every time they were in battle together, Frank’s insides twisted in knots. What would he do without her? It was a question he didn’t want to think about, so he shoved it deep inside, into that little box of fear and doubt where he stuffed everything he didn’t have the leisure or the desire to deal with.
“I love you always,” Mary said into his neck.
Frank caught a teary note in her voice, and squeezed her tighter for a moment before replying, “All the days, baby… I love you all the days.”
- 22 -
1145 HOURS - ZERO DAY +254
CASSY TURNED TO Michael amidst the clamor of people staking their mounts on the back side of the hill, spreading out to her left and right, and generally getting ready. “How many do we have?”
“We number about four-hundred troops, plus the medic team from Renfar,” Michael said.
“Was the scouts’ report on their unit size accurate?”
“I believe the Empire only has the one company there, for now. But if the OpFor’s other two companies are en route to rally with this company, they’ll be here in about half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes at most. We have to move fast.”
She knew when they got there they’d be evenly matched. Damn, that truly sucked.
“Maybe I should have brought the battlecars,” Cassy said. “What’s done is done, though. I’m open to suggestions from our resident military genius.”
Michael smiled briefly. “I’m no genius. But for what it’s worth, my advice is to overwhelm this OpFor before they’re reinforced. If we can render them combat-ineffective, we can then turn to face the other two companies, hopefully with a numerical advantage.”
Cassy looked out over the valley for a brief moment, contemplating Michael’s advice. It made sense. “Yes, let’s do that,” she said with a nod.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll gather up a hundred good riders, starting with Taggart’s troops, and ride north using the hills for cover. I want to circle them, and then hit them in the rear while the rest of you have their undivided attention.” Michael frowned at Cassy. “You will, of course, stay on this hill so you can maintain line-of-sight to all our engaging units, right?”
Cassy shook her head. “No. I’ll be with the troops crossing that terrain down there. I want to be with our boys and girls when they begin to scale that hill under fire. I will not send them where I’m afraid to go.”
Michael’s eyebrows furrowed. “Cassy, why don’t you lead the riders, and I’ll
coordinate the battle? I can probably do it better, I can do it best from up here. That is my job, right? Leading our troops in battle?”
“No, not right now. I don’t know how to lead an ambush, Michael. You will ride with the cavalry, and use your best judgment on when and how to engage them, once we have their attention. I’m the Clan leader—I can’t stay in back where it’s safe, and I can’t leave the battlefield to launch an ambush during our end-game play.”
A voice behind her made her spin, recognizing Frank’s deep voice, saying, “Cassy, that’s a very bad idea. I think you should let me and Michael lead here. We’ll each take a flank, and you can go with the cavalry. Michael can assign some qualified Marine to stay up here and keep us all in touch with the big picture or approaching threats, using our short-range radios.”
Damn Frank… Cassy didn’t like being ganged up on, and it wasn’t like Frank knew more about combat than she did. They were both civilians before all this, for Pete’s sake. “This isn’t up for debate. I’m staying with the main Clan troops. Frank, you’re better on horseback than on foot, so you and Michael decide who takes the cavalry and who takes our left flank. One of Michael’s military people can stay here to observe and report, but I got our right flank.”
Frank opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by Cassy almost immediately. “Dismissed, dammit!”
Cassy spun on her heels and strode away toward the “right” side of the hill, barking orders. At least the rest of her troops could listen to freaking orders! They moved quickly and efficiently to line up, get into position, check ammo… Whatever her orders as she walked her line, they obeyed quickly and well. That was a damn good thing, because they had precisely zero time to spare if they were going to mop up this company before their bigger, badder friends arrived.
* * *
As Cassy strode away, Frank looked to Michael, dumbfounded. “What the hell?”
Dark New World (Book 5): EMP Resurrection Page 29
