Michael shrugged. Quietly, he replied, “She has a point, Frank. She’s the leader. It has to be she who leads. You want the cavalry, or the frontal assault?”
Frank felt his face flush red, his palms sweating. “Dammit, Michael, I know you don’t believe that. If we lose her, we lose more than just another Clanner. Do you think the Confederation is strong enough to survive without her leadership?”
Michael frowned, and grabbed Franks arm. He leaned in to whisper through clenched teeth, “Frank, shut the fuck up. Don’t you get it? She’s going to do this, right or wrong, and we can’t stop her. Stop fucking with the troops’ heads by being insubordinate. They have to trust her leadership to survive this, and they have to take that trust back home with them to their settlements to keep the Confederation strong. Get on board or get on your horse and go home.”
Then, patting Frank’s shoulder and smiling, he said loudly enough to be overheard, “Yes, she knows what she’s doing. Damn straight, Frank. So you want the assault or the ambush?”
Frank, agape, stared at Michael. How could he agree with Cassy on this? It was so wrong… Or was it? If Cassy wasn’t going to change her mind, then maybe throwing a hissy fit about it in front of the troops, minutes before they went into battle, wasn’t the best thing for morale. “My wife is here. My people are here. You take the soldiers, and go—”
“Excuse me,” said a dark-haired young man, maybe nineteen or twenty years old, approaching. He wore blue jeans, combat boots, and a denim jacket, with a John Deer cap on his head. “Is this where we should set up the mortars?”
Frank blinked. “The what?” The words made sense individually, but strung together, Frank was drawing a blank.
“The mortars, sir. We brought three mortars and twenty shells for each, from Renfar.”
Frank turned to look at Michael, and saw he had done the same. They stared at each other for a second. Then Michael broke into a huge grin.
“How do you have mortars, kid?” Michael asked, his grin still going ear to ear.
The young man said, “Oh, we make them. The Renaissance Fairgrounds have all sorts of stuff for fabrication. Even welding. We got one of those wood-powered generators from Falconry to power a bunch of tools, a compressor… Anyway, one of our guys was a survival nut before the war, and made us a bunch of these.”
Michael made a weird barking noise, then shouted, “Oorah!” He pointed down the back of the hill, and said to the Renfar man, “Don’t just stand there, son. Get them set up just downhill, there, where snipers can’t get you.”
Frank watched, still trying to figure out what that barking noise had been. It was kind of intimidating. And it made him look to Michael for orders, by reflex. Wow. How’d he do that?
Michael turned back to Frank and said, “My friend, this changes everything. You’ll have to take command of our left wing because I won’t be able to. I’ll put the cavalry mission to flank the Empire troops in the hands of Taggart’s ranking officer, Captain Willard if I remember right. I have to stay here and…” he paused, then continued, “and tell the mortar operators where to fire. I’m the only one I know for sure who’s well-trained as a forward observer and spotter.”
Frank grinned. For once, Michael had used regular English instead of Marine lingo Frank couldn’t understand as readily. “Hot damn. You get them set up and run the artillery. I’ll take left wing. You got your radio?”
Michael nodded, pointing at his hip.
Frank turned to hobble toward his part of the line, leaving Michael to do whatever it was he did as a “forward observer.” He, Michael, and Cassy all had short-range handheld radios, with a couple spares extra. Frank assumed one would go to the cavalry detachment and the other to the field hospital. Already, down the hill, the medical pavilions were going up even as Michael’s artillery troops got themselves into position. Frank glanced up and down his own line of people, and nodded. They knew what to do without him telling them—get in line, hurry up, and wait for orders. Standard operating procedure, SOP.
“Story of my life,” he grunted, and pulled his M4 off his back, checked his magazines, and got back on his horse. He’d be the only one to ride into battle, the rest of his troops having staked their horses behind the hill’s cover, just as Cassy’s troops to the right had done.
* * *
Cassy keyed up her radio and, after it beeped to indicate it was transmitting, she said, “Charlie One to Delta One, status?” She was, of course, Charlie One. Delta One was the cavalry detachment and Delta Two was the mortar team. Frank was Lincoln One, a not-so-clever reference to the fact that he led the left flank.
“Delta One. We are mobile. Good to go,” replied the cavalry detachment. Whoever was on radio duty for them had a familiar voice, so probably one of the Clanners who had gone with them, or maybe one of Michael’s familiar Marines.
Frank’s voice then came on, saying, “Lincoln is in position, Lincoln One standing by for orders.”
Cassy handed the radio to a young Clanner who would act as her radio operator, and looked out over the small valley between her people and the Empire’s invasion force. No doubt this valley would soon turn red with blood. Those bastards on the valley’s other end were still in the same position, only now prone for the most part. They would wait for the Clan—no, the Confederation, she reminded herself—to come to them. Cassy’s people would be assaulting people who were prone, using the hill crest as cover, and defending the high ground. They showed no interest in going on the offensive against Cassy’s larger force. That would have been too much to hope for.
Her heart raced, and she felt like she couldn’t catch her breath. In her mind, she heard Choony’s calm, nearly monotone voice telling her how to slow her heartbeat and her breathing. She took a moment to slip into the memory, following his instructions, and felt her heart slow. Breathing came easier, too. The adrenaline subsided. It was only pre-battle jitters… During the actual fighting, she never seemed to freeze or panic. She shook like a leaf afterward, but never during. Michael had once told her she was naturally wired for battle, and it was far from common. He also said it wasn’t always a good thing, and meant that she had to remember that most of her own troops wouldn’t be wired that way.
Cassy nodded to her radio operator. “Get ready.” Then she turned to face the enemy. She’d have to cross this valley with her troops, but there was plenty of cover. Only at the last rush up the hill would the Confed forces be completely exposed, but she’d worry about that after she crossed the four hundred yards between her forces and their prey.
Over the radio, Michael advised everyone that Delta One was on the way and to get their troops across as fast as they could without being reckless—the cavalry detachment would hit the enemy in the rear after they were fully engaged.
“Charge!” she yelled. “Keep covered for as long as you can but don’t stop until you’re close enough to shoot the bastards!”
Then she was running. The sun was warm and welcoming, the breeze was slight and refreshing. Above and around them, birds still chirped. Such a gorgeous day… She reached the first cover, a lengthy section of bush, and stopped, crouching down. In a few seconds, the rest of her unit had caught up, and she waved them on. “Go, go, go!”
After a few had passed her, the unit flowing around the bush, she bolted forward again. Three-hundred-fifty yards to go. Three hundred yards. Two-hundred-fifty yards, moving from cover to cover. They had heard some random potshots early on, until whoever was in charge up there put a stop to it. She guessed that the enemy would hold fire until the Confeds were within easier range, to conserve ammunition. When they had gone another fifty yards, Cassy could feel tension building in the air, like she could actually read the minds of both the enemy and her units. The real fight was about to begin. She was wound up tight and ready.
* * *
Frank had organized his people into five thirty-person platoons, figuring that five unit commanders might be harder to coordinate, but would also be more
flexible and require less attention from him. He had no idea if it was the right decision, but now, riding his horse alongside his running platoon-mates, it was too late to change it. He glanced to his right from time to time to make sure he kept more or less in line with Cassy’s units. Ahead, the meters between him and his enemy slowly shrank.
When he had gotten about fifty yards out, the Empire troops opened fire, but it had only been a scattering and had quickly abated. No one in his platoon had been hit, and a glance left and right didn’t reveal anyone else obviously hit, so he had kept going.
At one-hundred yards out, his units had reached the first sporadic cover. Cassy’s side of the valley had more cover, or at least it had begun further back. “Two by two!” he yelled, and heard the call repeated all down his line. He nodded in approval when he saw that half remained in cover while half advanced; when they reached cover, the first half then moved out. It was a deadly game of leapfrog.
Another twenty-five yards, followed by another—and then all hell broke loose. The air filled with the deep echoes of rifle fire and hundreds of high-pitched buzzing sounds as the bullets streaked by. A scream to his left, and he saw a man fall, clutching his leg; two men rushed to him and dragged him to cover, one grabbing the man’s rifle. Then from cover, all three popped up to return fire. The roar of shooting was all around him, then, as both his troops and Cassy’s returned fire. A deafening whizz went by his ear, a bullet narrowly missing Frank’s head, but he paid it no heed. It hadn’t had his name on it.
“Advance, advance,” he screamed to his left. A third of those men and women scurried out from cover and sprinted to the next cover in line, most sliding the last few feet. Then a hundred Confed fighters returned fire on the Empire’s ridgeline, and Frank heard a couple of screams. The rest ducked down for a moment, hiding from the swarm of death that poured into their ranks, and Frank’s troops in the rear took advantage. They sprinted forward, passing their companions who fired up at the ridge to keep the enemy down. This once, the enemy’s elevated position worked to Frank’s advantage as his troops continued suppressive fire even after they had been passed by their companions. The sprinting troops found cover and hid. Frank heard the sounds of dozens and dozens of rifles being reloaded.
Frank heard cheering from up on the hill. He put his binoculars to his eyes and looked up to find that a stretch of hilltop nearly one-hundred feet long had a low, two-tier sandbag wall. The top sandbags were positioned so that the prone men and women behind it could rest their rifle barrels between them and on the solid bottom layer. There was no way his people could effectively counter that no matter how much fire they hit it with. And with them being uphill, there was little chance of a grenade making it that far. Hell, they’d probably roll halfway back down the hill toward the thrower before detonating.
“Fuck this,” Frank muttered as he plucked the radio from his belt. He keyed it and, shouting above the din of battle, said, “Lincoln One requesting fire support. Michael, I got a sandbagged emplacement. They got us stopped cold.”
“Lincoln One, this is Delta Two. What are their coordinates?” Michael’s steady voice came out from the radio’s speaker.
“On the ridge, maybe fifty yards east of the central hilltop,” Frank shouted back.
His radio crackled, but there was a deafening roar and he couldn’t hear whatever Michael had said. Frank looked over by reflex and saw two—no, three!—geysers of dirt and flame rising from the ground, swallowing some of his leading troops. The Empire bastards were throwing grenades. Frank cursed himself for not realizing that just because his troops couldn’t throw grenades up there, that didn’t mean the enemy couldn’t. Gravity and descending terrain combined to give them a much farther range than they would on level ground.
As dirt rained down on him and the troops around him, Frank raised his radio to his mouth, but before he could click the button, he felt a deep rumble in his bones, and his ears were assaulted by the most menacing sound he had ever heard. He looked toward the source—the hastily sandbagged enemy position—and if grenades had raised geysers of dirt, then whatever had hit them raised monsoons, with almost blindingly bright flashes of light. The mortars! Michael must have been an expert with them, because his first three rounds all hit hostile targets. Those were followed several heartbeats later by three more of the huge, murderous blossoms of light.
Frank screamed—charge, and move it, and now-now-now. The entire line of Confed troops rose from cover and sprinted forward, first only a couple and then a tsunami, all rushing uphill screaming their war cries. Frank, atop his horse, rode back and forth along his line shouting encouragement. Twice he called for medics, but he knew there were more down, and there would be more still to come.
He spotted Mary, crouched behind a bush under heavy fire from a cluster of Empire troops, but those vanished in a flash of fire, noise, dirt, and gore as a mortar shell landed on them. Mary spotted him and waved, then rushed up the hill as well. He rode toward her, and together they made their way up the hill. Many of his unit were already at the crest, pouring fire onto the Empire troops. This was going to work!
And then Frank saw movement toward the base of the hill on the back side, and froze. Dozens, no, hundreds of Empire troops pedaled furiously at the base of the hill, and then dismounted, throwing their bikes down and rushing up the hill. Time seemed to both slow down and speed up as tiny details became crystal clear while the mass of battle around him seemed to occur in a haze. He clicked his radio on and screamed that the other two companies were coming up the hill, but didn’t have time to listen to the response.
A hail of bullets flew up hill at him. Abruptly, he felt the wind knocked out of him and found himself looking up at the clear blue sky, and his mind reeled trying to make sense of it.
Mary’s face came into view, red and screaming, but Frank couldn’t hear the words. What was she saying? Get up?
The noise of battle crashed through to him once again, shattering the confused silence, and his mind caught up. His horse had been shot out from under him. Mary was screaming for him to get up. He looked down the hill and saw the enemy swarming like locusts as they rushed toward him.
Mary helped him up and they hobbled down the hill back the way they had come. He saw dozens and dozens of his troops rushing past him going the other way, up the hill. Screams of agony came from all around him, friend and enemy alike.
Frank took one last glance over his shoulder and down the hillside behind him and saw doom approaching, for behind the wave of Empire people who were now halfway up the hill came another wave of them.
The Clan had misjudged the enemy. There were more than Cassy had thought. This was going to be a disaster, barring a miracle. Frank heard words coming out of his mouth. “Mary, there’s more! Run, run dammit!”
He couldn’t hear her response well over the din of battle and the din in his mind, but she didn’t run. She gripped him tighter and half pulled, half dragged him down the hill. Behind him, a cheer arose even as, all around him and Mary, Confed fighters ran past. Fleeing the enemy, as he was. He clicked the radio again. “Cassy, Lincoln falling back. Fall back!”
There was no reply. Frank felt desperation creep over him—something had happened. The fool must have charged into battle. Damn her!
As the Confed troops thinned out, fewer now running past him, Frank heard the cries of triumph on the hillside turn to screams. Frantic gunfire. Horse hoof-beats. Abruptly, people appeared all around him, running—Empire people. Half didn’t carry weapons, he noted, mind not making sense of what he was seeing.
Frank felt a bone-crushing impact on his back. Mary screamed in pain and fear as the ground rushed up at him.
* * *
Samuel pedaled hard toward the sound of battle. Ahead of him, he saw his troops rushing up the hill, killing the damned Confed troops up there. Around him, the fleeing Republic troops were rallying, joining his own people and heading back up that deadly hill. What Confederation troops didn’t die,
fled.
Beside him, Brett panted but didn’t slow down, the gentle slope tiring him but not stopping him, and Samuel was determined to keep up. Together, they reached the crest of the hill. They dodged corpses—Empire and Confederation alike—and almost pulled air as they kept pedaling. Ahead, he saw a knot of six people surrounding a seventh, who was barely keeping to his feet as a woman struggled to keep him upright and fleeing.
Samuel gathered some of his nearby troops, his voice carrying over the riotous noise, and they chased after that knot of Confed troops. An easy target, and in striking distance. He grinned, and felt like the cobra must feel right before it strikes.
One of his own men easily outpaced the rest of them, even Samuel himself, despite being on foot. Of course it would be a black. Dammit, there was no way he was going to let some darkie with a knife get this kill. Samuel pulled out his carbine, aimed, and fired at his trooper. The man fell headlong, right into the staggering Confed man and the woman, and all three landed in a tangle of limbs. Well, that’s what you get when you try to upstage Samuel Pease, he thought, and grinned as he closed the distance to the group. They had stopped, five of the Confed turning around to fire on Samuel and his oncoming Republic troops while the woman tried to get the man back to his feet. Samuel and his men fired once, the volley dropping the brave Confed idiots like flies.
Only the hobbled man and the woman remained. Despite the hopelessness of their situation, the two struggled to flee, leaving their rifles behind in the mad rush to escape. He and his men had them quickly surrounded.
Samuel got off his bike and sauntered toward the encircled two, while his troops finished off the five downed Confeds. When Brett stooped at one of the bodies and took an ear for a trophy, Samuel grinned, then looked up at his next victims. The man… He looked family. Samuel cocked his head for a moment, and then it came to him. The ambush at Elizabethtown. He’d been one of them. Clearly someone in charge, if his people were willing to protect him, to die for him.
Dark New World (Book 5): EMP Resurrection Page 30
