Captain Hrelitz's head swung left and right; her hand dropped, and C Company was on the move, trailed by combat engineers heavily laden with demolition charges.
Emerging into the gloom of late evening, Michael was shocked to see how far the damage extended. Barbecues firing from the plateau above had dropped a fan-shaped wave of destruction onto the Hammers' beachhead; all human life for hundreds of meters had been obliterated. It was carnage, yet more bodies flung with careless abandon across the valley floor as far as the rock wall rising sheer on the other side. Wounded lay everywhere, untended, ignored, small islands of agony and suffering, the air filled with screams for help that rose and fell over a soft murmur of moans, sobs, prayers, and cries.
Michael had seen his share of death but had never seen anything like this. This was Armageddon writ small; for the first time he allowed himself to believe that Hrelitz's optimism was justified.
C Company pushed on into the night, moving fast. Reaching the dead ground leading up to the vehicle park's western perimeter, Hrelitz halted First and Second Platoons, the platoon commanders repositioning their troopers ready for the attack. Then Third Platoon peeled off and headed southeast to establish the initial base of fire, their chromaflaged shapes swallowed quickly by the night, a thin tendril of reinforced optical fiber their only link back to Hrelitz.
Staying close to Lance Corporal Sadotra, Michael threw himself down behind the shattered trunk of a tree only to come face to face with a dead Hammer marine, arms thrown out wide, head back, helmet ripped half-off, mouth open in a rictus of agony, empty black pits of eyes staring right into Michael's. On top of the stench in the air, it was too much, and his stomach rebelled, emptying itself in a series of convulsive heaves all over the ground.
"Oh, hell," he murmured. He wiped his mouth, ignoring the urge to take a swig from his canteen. Somehow he did not think Sadotra would approve. He shivered. Compared to the remote, clinical precision of space warfare, this was a waking nightmare.
Forcing a rebellious body back under control, Michael scanned the area around their position, looking for any Hammers who might have survived the fuel-air charges' appalling combination of heat and blast. But nothing moved on the shock-scoured killing ground.
A blurred shape appeared out of the gloom, whispered something to Sadotra, and then disappeared. Sadotra rolled toward Michael. "Stand by. Jump off at minute 25," she whispered. "Go pass the word to the section. Minute 25."
"Minute 25. Got it." Grateful that he had something better to do than lie around thinking about all the Hammers waiting to blow his head apart, Michael slithered around Yankee section before making his way back to Sadotra. "Yankee section's ready to go," he said.
"Any problems?"
"No. Everyone's good." Better than me, he wanted to say.
Sadotra nodded, her helmeted head blurred by its chromaflage skin into an elusive, shifting gray shape barely visible against the black background.
Minute 25 arrived at last. Without a single word being said, Sadotra and the rest of Second Platoon rose to their feet and moved up the slope toward the northwestern edge of the vehicle park. Then all hell broke loose; without thinking, Michael dived for the ground, scrabbling at the dirt in a frantic search for cover. Ahead and to the right of them, the searing flashes of microgrenades bleached black into white, and wandering lines of tracer fire and the streak of lasers slashed lines of white, gold, and red across the night sky, the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire broken by bone-jarring crump of mortars.
Michael had never experienced anything like it. His every sense was overwhelmed. Swamped by light and noise and shock and fear, his brain froze for an instant. Then a residual grain of common sense told him that nobody was shooting at him… yet. Belatedly, he realized that what he was seeing was 12 and 5 Brigades' attacks kicking off, and now it was C Company's turn. To Michael's right, Third Platoon opened up on the Hammer's left flank, a wall of tracer chewing away at the Hammer positions, golden lines interlaced with the red streaks of Stabber squad antiarmor missiles as they hunted out and destroyed a pair of Akkad light tanks. Embarrassed, he scrambled back to his feet and ran to catch up with Sadotra, praying she had not noticed his moment of weakness.
Michael did what Anna had told him to do: keep going, stay in position, and watch for any sign of life, but there was none, only shattered trees interspersed with wrecked Hammer support positions, and everywhere dead and wounded marines. Third Platoon's fire pounded away, but there was no response.
The hulking black shapes packed into the Hammer's heavy equipment park were obvious now. Michael kept moving, heart pounding and skin crawling, certain that somewhere ahead a Hammer must have him in his sights. Then, without any warning, tracer rounds exploded out of the darkness. Streaking past his head, they slashed the air apart in yellow-gold lines that came and went in an instant. Instinctively he spun away, hurling himself to the ground and into cover. His neuronics computed the target data, and he rolled to one side to return fire at the unseen enemy, the assault rifle's recoil pounding his shoulder as hypervelocity rounds ripped away into the darkness, the searing flash of a microgrenade imprinting an image of a Hammer marine frozen in the air as he was blown out of his foxhole.
The equipment park erupted.
Michael was frightened now. The darkness between him and the Hammers had filled with a lethal blizzard of rifle and heavy machine gun fire punctuated by the flat crack of microgrenades. All hope he might have had of getting out of this awful place alive was stripped away by the ferocity of it all. He lay paralyzed by the sheer weight of fire coming his way before he belatedly realized that the Hammers were firing blindly, wandering lines of tracer fire hosing the night sky wildly in all directions; anything coming his way was an accident.
To his dismay, the rest of the platoon had already worked that out. While First Platoon pounded the Hammer positions, Second Platoon stayed on its feet, swinging left to flank the enemy's positions. With a euphoric rush, adrenaline overwhelmed fear, and Michael climbed to his feet even though the whip crack of rifle fire was dangerously close, then closer still, and fear replaced euphoria. Flinching as a burst tore past his head with a flat slap, Michael knew he was losing his grip on the situation; unable to keep his mind focused, he was distracted and confused, head swinging wildly as he tried to work out what to do next. He struggled to control his frustration; he might have been a dreadnought captain once, but now he was just another NRA trooper, utterly dependent on Sadotra. He was no foot soldier; he had no idea how anyone could understand, let alone react effectively to, the chaos that had engulfed him.
Michael might have been confused; Anna and the rest of her platoon were not. As they stopped short of the razor wire protecting the vehicle park's western edge, breaching charges were slung under the wire, Second Platoon untroubled by random fire wandering uselessly overhead. The Hammers and their hostile fire indicators were being swamped by the furious fire being thrown at them by the rest of C Company. With a dull crump, to Michael's ear almost inaudible amid the racket of rifle and heavy machine gun fire, the way was clear and section by section the charges exploded, shredding the razor wire, and Second Platoon was into the vehicle park proper.
Now what? Michael's neuronics gave him the answer, a red target indicator lozenge popping into view over a blurred shape scuttling away down a line of vehicles, the man moving too fast for his chromaflage to compensate. Without thinking, Michael dropped the Hammer in his tracks.
"Radios and lasers on," Anna barked. "They know we're here now."
Michael's neuronics burst into life as voice networks came online, orders flowing quick and fast, the platoon breaking into sections to start cleaning out any Hammers holed up among the equipment packed into the vehicle park. A quick glance at the updated tactical plot confirmed what Michael wanted to see: First Platoon had broken through the wire south of Second Platoon and was now working its way into the columns of vehicles, hounding and harassing Hammers out of cover; Thi
rd Platoon was on the move on the right flank of the attack, proceeding fire team by fire team along the park's southern edge, channeling the fleeing Hammers away to the east, sustained heavy fire lashing them as they retreated.
For the first time, Michael began to understand fully why Hrelitz had been so optimistic. Stunned and demoralized by the tremendous blast from the fuel-air charges that opened the attack, their commanders distracted by the attacks launched by 5 and 12 Brigades, the rear-echelon marines tasked with securing the vehicle park had no stomach for a fight. With little attempt at organized resistance, their defense collapsed into a series of isolated firefights. Outmaneuvered, outgunned, outfought-these were firefights the Hammer marines had no chance of winning.
Meter by meter, Sadotra's section worked its way along the northern perimeter. Michael shut out the bedlam around him, lost in the mindless business of killing, his assault rifle pounding his shoulder as he fired short bursts into every target his neuronics presented, his entire existence reduced to one simple task: putting the sights of his assault rifle onto the red target icons and pulling the trigger. So absorbed was he that it came as a shock when the platoon reached the eastern edge of the vehicle park and Anna called a halt, the orders flowing thick and fast as she deployed troopers to consolidate their position.
Lungs heaving and heart still thumping, Michael stood for a moment, shocked to find that he was still alive.
Second Platoon had dug itself into defensive positions around the vehicle park's eastern edge. After Sadotra's trenchant criticism of his first attempt, Michael was now the proud owner of a regulation fighting position, well concealed under chromaflage micromesh netting-another product of Chief Chua's burgeoning industrial empire-and invisible to passing Hammer recon drones.
Anna's grip on her platoon was viselike; with ruthless efficiency, she had sent the platoon's handful of prisoners back to Juliet-24, transferred her wounded to the casualty collection point, walked the ground forward of the platoon, made sure the remote holocams covered all possible enemy lines of approach, checked fighting positions, briefed her section commanders on the next phase of the operation, and a whole lot more, none of which would ever have occurred to him, in a bravura performance that made Michael realize that the love of his life was wasted in Fleet. The woman was a born foot soldier. He might think he knew Anna better than anyone else alive, but still she had the capacity to surprise. Happy that she was doing a job he never could, he leaned against the front wall of the trench, eyes scanning the ground for any sign of enemy activity. Not that there was any; as far as Michael could tell, the vicious battle being fought by 12 Brigade in the distance had sucked in every Hammer capable of moving, the air over the battle flicker-flashing in a never-ending display of pyrotechnics, the noise of combat rolling across the broken ground like thunder. He wondered how Mokhine's attack on the Hammer's headquarters was going; being only a humble grunt, he did not have the right privileges to access that level of the tactical plot.
To his surprise, Anna slid under the chromaflage net and into the trench. "Good to see a proper fighting position, Lieutenant," she said.
"Gee thanks, Sarge," Michael said, refusing to rise to the bait and keeping his eyes out front.
"We'll make a soldier of you yet, and I was right. You can shoot even if you had no idea what was going on, none at all."
"Yeah, well?" Michael said with a shrug. "I'm a spacer, remember? Not some dirt-munching grunt."
"Spacer or not, here's the plan."
"We get to go home?" Michael asked hopefully.
"Focus, Lieutenant, focus."
"Sorry."
"As you can see, the assault on the Hammers covering the valley to the east and west of Juliet-24 by 12 and 5 Brigades has gone well. They took them by surprise, they retain tactical advantage, and they are giving the Hammers a great deal of grief. ENCOMM has ordered them to keep going until the Hammers break."
"Jeez," Michael hissed. "What if they can't?"
"They have to," Anna said flatly. "They have to."
"Okay. And our mission?"
"To hold this position until 12 Brigade withdraws. Hrelitz says that elements of 12 Brigade have penetrated the Hammer positions so far that they'll be forced to pull back through our positions. That means we'll be staying here until they've withdrawn. Once they're clear, we'll screen them all the way to Juliet-24. If we can't make it back there, our fallback egress route is through the vehicle park to the emergency accesses. They're marked Juliet-24 Alfa on your tactical plot."
Michael frowned. "It all sounds tricky."
"It's called a rearward passage of lines, and yes, it's tricky. How tricky depends on how much pressure the Hammers put us under. Anyway, can't worry about that. Now, what else? Oh, yes. The rest of the battalion didn't just destroy the Hammer's command post; Colonel Mokhine went and captured his very own major general of Hammer marines. The prick's on his way to ENCOMM already."
"Good one."
"Don't think the Hammer general would agree. Anyway, once they've handed over their prisoners, A and B Companies will move up to reinforce our position."
"And Fifth Brigade?"
"Is going well, according to Hrelitz. Same deal. The plan is to keep fighting, break the Hammers, then withdraw, but that's someone else's problem. Anyway, got to go. There'll be a detailed briefing in an hour. Keep your eyes open. I'm off to talk to the rest of the section."
"Just one more."
Anna sighed. "One more and that's it."
"Why are we being left alone? We're in the middle of thousands of Hammers, we've shot the shit out of their heavy equipment park, Colonel Mokhine's captured their command post, and nobody's come calling. Makes no sense."
"Hrelitz was wondering the same thing. Several reasons, we think. First, those fuel-air charges cut the guts out of the Hammers' reserves. She thinks their casualties have run into the thousands. Second, the attacks by 5 and 12 Brigades seem to have sucked in every Hammer available unit not committed to local security duties. Third, like you said, their c-cubed has had its head lopped off. Those Hammers out there"-she waved a hand at an eastern horizon alive with the light and fury of combat-"have their own battles to fight, and none of them has the big picture. We're being ignored, and long may it continue. Now let me get on."
"Yes, Sergeant."
Anna started to climb out of the trench, then stopped and turned. "You did well, Michael, but not well enough. You took too many risks. Don't get so tied up. Try to keep one eye on the target and one eye on the big picture. If you don't, someone's going to pop up and blow your damn head off before you even see them coming. Okay?"
Michael nodded. "Yes, Sergeant," he said, reassured by Anna's obvious competence even though still worried sick. Attacking the Hammers was one thing; disengaging when the time came to pull back was quite another.
"Things are quieting down over there," Sadotra muttered scanning the horizon.
"They are," Michael said. "Any word from ENCOMM?"
"No, not yet, but I don't think it can be-"
Both flinched as a savage explosion bleached the eastern sky white, so searingly bright that Michael's eyes watered. A few seconds later, the shock wave arrived, accompanied by a crackling rumble.
"Main battle tank fusion plant, I reckon," Sadotra said. "And since the NRA doesn't own any Aqaba main battle tanks, that means it's one of the Hammers'."
Michael nodded. "One less coming our way when 12 Brigade pulls out," he said as the sky lit up again and again. "No, make that three less."
The thought of taking on Hammer heavy armor bothered Michael. The 2/83rd might be a tough, battle-hardened battalion, but stopping Aqaba main battle tanks with command-detonated mines, Stabber antiarmor missiles, claymores, machine guns, and assault rifles was one hell of a big ask, not to say downright impossible. Stopping them required Sampan medium antiarmor missiles; ever the optimist, Mokhine had asked ENCOMM for some. He was told none were available of course. The Aqaba was a brute: fast, m
aneuverable, well armored, armed with an autoloaded 95-millimeter hypervelocity gun, missile pods, and defensive lasers. Capable of remote operation, taking real-time battlefield intelligence from recon drones, and supported by ground-attack landers and attack drones, it was a formidable threat. The Feds had long abandoned the main battle tank-too big, too clumsy, too expensive, too vulnerable to mines and missiles-in favor of a mix of light armor and combatbots, but the Hammer military still loved the things. Anna reckoned it was because the hulking black shapes matched the Hammers' national character: all brute force and no finesse.
Michael's neuronics burst into life. "Stand to, contact sector 4, stand by… friendlies, say again, friendlies."
At last, Michael thought. The wait had been killing him; he grinned when the image popped into his neuronics. The chromaflaged shapes were too scruffy to be Hammer marines, their capes so well used that some were more holes and tears than fabric. Shifting his optronics down into the infrared, Michael checked their IFF patches.
"Positively identified as NRA, Corp," he said to Sadotra.
"Roger. Hammers won't be far behind."
With a final check to make sure he was ready, Michael eased his rifle into the tiny gap between the chromaflage net overhead and the sandbagged parapet. He knew every square centimeter of the ground in front of his position. He should; he had spent a long time looking at it. C Company's three platoons were dug in along the eastern perimeter of the Hammer vehicle park, their left flank secured by a towering wall of rock. Positioned to enfilade a Hammer advance down the track through the middle of the valley as it passed the vehicle park, C Company's mission was simple: to ensure a Hammer attack could not flank B Company, which was dug in on the right and straddling the track as it dropped down from a small ridge. A Company had been held back in reserve.
The result was a killing zone constricted by the rock wall on the far side of the valley to Michael's right and the vehicle park on the left, the ground in between seeded with command-fired mines to stop the armor in its tracks and claymores to break up any dismounted attacks. That much Michael did understand, even if the chances of a single understrength battalion with no air support and precious few attack drones stopping a serious Hammer armored assault had to be slim, even slimmer if the Hammers supported the attack with landers.
The battle for Commitment planet hw-4 Page 35
