“All right, all right,” the scientist responded grumpily. “Do it your way.”
“Thank you,” the soldier replied. “I will.”
SOUTH OF HAGALA NOR, PLANET SAVAS
The tip of the Confederacy force consisted of twelve twenty-five-foot-tall quads, each carrying a full load-out of munitions and traveling at a stately twenty miles per hour. Dust boiled up around them, was caught by the wind, and blown back over the column. Farther to the rear, and protected on by both flanks by platoons of Trooper IIs, came the command quad, the medical quad, maintenance quads, air support quads, and half a dozen transport quads carrying civilians and supplies. The rear guard consisted of another company of quads plus B Company’s T-2s.
Kobbi referred to the formation as a “two-headed snake,” meaning an entity that could travel forward or backward with equal facility, although there was only one direction in which the crusty officer wanted to go, and that was forward. And so far the advance had been easy, too easy, or so it seemed to Santana.
The cavalry officer knew that the decision to drop B Company into the drag position was Kobbi’s way of giving him and his troops a break after the fight at the water hole and the battle in the desert. Still, the legionnaire would have preferred to see where the battalion was headed instead of where it had been. But orders are orders, and his were to make sure that the bugs didn’t attack the battalion from behind, or stop them if they did.
As the battalion cleared some extensive ruins, B Company entered them and followed electronic markers north. Hundreds of years of heat, cold, and occasional rain had reduced the earthen city to a labyrinth of twisting streets, slowly melting walls, and shattered domes. Everything was beige, tan, or brown, with only the occasional tinge of reddish iron oxide to provide some color.
Fresh damage could be seen where dozens of quads had marched through the ancient city, sideswiped heavily weathered buildings, crushed dwellings, and blasted anything that struck them as suspicious. Many walls remained, however, and Santana found himself tempted by the shade that they provided. The bio bods needed to take a leak every now and then even if the cyborgs didn’t, and the ruins looked like a good place to take a rest.
With that in mind Santana ordered the 1st and 3rd platoons to take a five-minute break while the second stood guard. After the first two-thirds of the company drained their tanks, the rest of the legionnaires would get their turn.
Santana notified the command quad as members of the 1st and 3rd platoons hurried to dismount. Most ducked into the shadows to take care of personal business, and the rest availed themselves of the opportunity to scratch what itched or tweak their support gear.
Sergeant Dietrich was no different. The legionnaire had just wet the sand in front of him and was in the process of zipping his pants when a set of tracks caught his eye. Not T-2 tracks, or quad tracks, but parallel crawler tracks that incorporated the distinctive chevron pattern that the bugs preferred. And not little tracks, but big tracks, each being about four feet wide. No big deal in and of themselves, especially since the Ramanthians had occupied that particular piece of real estate only hours before, but this particular set of tracks ended right in front of a blank wall!
Dietrich took a second look to ensure that he wasn’t mistaken, opened his com, and meandered toward his T-2. “Bravo Three Six to all Bravo units . . . I have reason to believe that the bugs left some armor hidden within the ruins. Members of the 1st and 2nd will return to their mounts. Slowly, so they don’t know we’re onto them, and prepare to engage. Over.”
Santana heard the noncom’s orders along with the rest of the company, felt a chill run up his spine, and turned toward Okuma. The previously innocent ruins had an ominous feel now—and the officer resisted an impulse to look back over his shoulder. Assuming Dietrich was correct, the Ramanthians had intentionally allowed the battalion to pass through the ancient city without firing on them. That suggested that the bugs intended to attack the formation from the rear. But would they make their move before the rear guard departed the area? Or after? There was no way to know, and the cavalry officer fought the temptation to dash across the street and leap onto the T-2’s back.
Meanwhile, about two hundred feet away, and fifteen feet below street level, Knifethrow sat within the cramped confines of the Ramanthian command tank. It was hot, extremely hot, and his fur was matted with sweat. The deserter eyed the video supplied by tiny sensors that his crew had left above ground. He knew the legionnaires above him, and when every single one of them turned toward their borgs, he knew they were responding to an order. “The bastards are onto us! Hit ’em!”
The Ramanthians were ready, had been for hours, and seemed to explode up out of the ground. Each beetlelike tank weighed about forty tons and was powered by two tandem engines. That meant the big black beasts had power to spare, and they used it to push up through the seemingly undisturbed streets and crash through the walls that had been constructed to conceal them. Santana broke into a run as the enemy tanks burst out of concealment, and a .50 caliber machine gun started to chug in the distance.
Okuma turned his back to the bio bod and willed the officer to hurry. Santana literally ran up the steps that were built into the back of the T-2’s legs and was still in the process of buckling himself in when a tank crashed through a wall across the street.
Okuma fired his energy cannon. The bolt left a scorch mark on the Ramanthian-made armor but had no other effect as Santana plugged into the T-2’s com system and made his report. “Bravo Six to Nomad Six. We are under attack! Repeat, under attack by an unknown number of Ramanthian heavies! They were hidden in the ruins. Request ground support. Over.”
It was Matala who replied. The XO sounded calm and didn’t waste time asking how such a thing could be possible. Questions of that sort would be dealt with later. “Roger that, Bravo Six. Help is on the way. Over.”
Santana took comfort from the fact that Kobbi’s two-headed snake could strike toward the rear as well as the front, but wondered if the reserve quads would arrive in time to save his company, or to bury it. A pair of fly-forms had arrived by then, but couldn’t engage the enemy without running the risk of inflicting casualties on B Company and had little choice but to circle impotently while the battle continued.
Having failed to dent the tank, Okuma spun away just as a cannon shell sped through the space he had occupied a moment earlier. That was when a borg named Fillo fired one of her two missiles. It scored a direct hit, and thick though the Ramanthian armor was, it couldn’t withstand the force of a shaped charge delivered a point-blank range. The primary explosion was followed by two secondary explosions that combined to tear the tank apart. Masonry shattered, razor-sharp shrapnel hummed through the air, and a deep, resonant boom! echoed between ancient walls.
Santana felt the resulting wave of heat wash across his face and allowed Okuma to handle the tactical situation while he scanned the symbols projected on the inside surface of his helmet visor. The multicolored dots and deltas were so intermingled that the officer knew it would be impossible to maneuver his company as a unit. He could allow the free-for-all to continue or order his troops to disengage. Conventional doctrine argued in favor of option two, especially in the face of superior firepower, but the T-2s were extremely agile, and reinforcements were on the way. Santana opened his mike. “Fire at will, but keep an eye out for friendlies, and don’t let them suck you into the open.”
At that point the officer switched to a schematic that provided him with a graphic depiction of the enemy’s communications patterns. A glance was sufficient to establish that 86 percent of all the Ramanthian communications were being initiated by a single tank. The company commander forwarded the screen to Okuma, ordered the T-2 to find that particular unit, and felt the borg respond. After all, Santana thought to himself, the quickest way to slay any beast is to chop off its head.
Okuma made his way down a side street, spotted a pile of rubble heaped against a wall, and turned the debris int
o a ramp. Once on top Okuma discovered that the flat surface was barely wide enough to accommodate his foot pods. The T-2 ran the length of the two-foot-wide divider even as chunks of adobe crumbled away from his feet.
Santana held on, felt his stomach lurch as the borg jumped a six-foot gap, and let his knees absorb the subsequent impact. Okuma’s right foot went through the roof, but the Trooper II kept his balance, and jerked the pod free. Then, eager to reach his destination, the borg made for the far side of debris-strewn surface. Santana winced as a tank fired, and one of his T-2s vanished from the heads-up display.
Then Okuma was there, right where he wanted to be, four feet above the command tank. It was parked at the end of a dead-end street pointed the other way. The huge beetle-shaped war machine belched smoke and rocked slightly as it fired a self-steering, antiarmor-seeking round at a target a thousand yards away. The noise was deafening, and Santana wished he had earplugs.
The range was too short for Okuma to use his remaining missile, so the cyborg jumped onto the vehicle’s upper deck and directed his energy cannon at the top hatch. It was armored, but not against a blast of energy fired from two feet away, and it wasn’t long before the metal started to liquefy. Meanwhile, down in the bowels of the machine, Knifethrow heard a double clang as something landed on the metal over his head, knew it was a T-2, and swore as the hatch started to melt and a drop of red-hot metal landed on the back of his neck. There was another way out, though, a belly hatch, if the renegade could reach it in time. The Naa pulled his sidearm, shot the tank commander in the back of the head, and dropped to the lowest level. The gunner absorbed two slugs in the back, closely followed by the loader, who took a round in the face.
Having eliminated the crew, the Naa dropped through the shaft located next to the main magazine, and tapped the foot switch. The hatch opened smoothly, allowing the ex-legionnaire to drop through the resulting hole. Dust spurted away from the renegade’s boots and Knifethrow proceeded to duckwalk out from under the tank.
The deserter had just emerged when a weight dropped on him from above and threw him facedown in the dirt. The Naa felt someone pull his pistol out of its holster and gave thanks when they failed to appropriate the knife. The weight disappeared, allowing him to push the ground away. “Hey,” Knifethrow objected, as he came to his feet and turned toward his attacker. “Take it easy! I was captured! Damn, its good to see . . .”
“Thanks,” Santana interrupted calmly. “It’s good to see you, too. Where’s Kuga-Ka?”
The Naa raised his hands as if to surrender. That put them very close to the knife that was hilt up at the nape of his neck. “The gunny? Hell, he’s . . .”
The renegade was fast, very fast, but Santana saw his hand move and fired. As the bullet struck his body armor, Knifethrow staggered, pulled the knife, and was about to throw it, when a second slug ripped through his throat. The Naa clutched at the wound, tried to stop the bleeding, and failed. He said something in his own language, frowned, and collapsed.
“Bravo Three Six to Bravo Six,” Dietrich said via the company push. “The heavies are here. Over.”
And Santana realized that the quads were there as one of the huge machines put a foot through the structure on his left, and fired its main gun. The cavalry had arrived.
Five miles to the north Kobbi and his staff sweltered in the command quad as fans whirred, com sets burped reports, and data scrolled across screens. The cone-shaped mountain was clear to see now, as was the shuttle that lifted out of the crater within. They watched the spacecraft turn on its own axis, fire chaff in an effort to distract the missiles that lashed up at it, and speed away. The transport, plus the markings it wore, served as a sure sign that a task force had arrived off Savas and was in the process of recovering the hypercom. Kobbi shook his head regretfully as the shuttle entered a steep climb, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it.
“It looks like more bugs are coming out to play,” the battalion’s intel officer commented, as the staff switched their attention to a video provided by the battalion’s sole surviving RPV. The drone was flying at its operational ceiling, zigzagging on a random basis, and using electronic countermeasures to avoid ground fire. It was only a matter of time before a missile brought the little aircraft down, but it was nice to have the shot for as long as it lasted. The aerial view showed Hagala Nor, the landing pad located at the bottom of the volcano’s crater, and tiny spurts of dust as black specks emerged from protective tunnels to venture out onto the plain beyond. “The tanks located to the rear were the anvil,” Kobbi observed, “and here comes the hammer.”
Major Matala saw that the jacker was correct as the RPV zoomed in to provide its audience with some additional magnification. At least two dozen tanks had emerged from the mountain onto the plain below. There were smaller targets, too, including some speedy ground effect vehicles that could inflict quite a bit of damage if they were able to close with the quads. Assuming that the T-2s would be kept busy dealing with the lesser vehicles, it looked as if the quads would be outnumbered two to one. Not a pleasant prospect, but now that a fresh batch of Ramanthian ships had dropped into orbit, there wasn’t any choice.
Orders went out, and the quads formed a staggered line abreast. A formation that would enable all of them to engage the enemy at once, minimize the chance of firing on each other, and force the enemy to deal with the entire line rather than concentrating their fire on a few cyborgs.
Dontha watched from a position high on the extinct volcano’s rim as his tanks opened fire. There was a bloodcurdling shriek as the rounds arced through the air, followed by flashes of light as they exploded, and a series of dull crumps. Columns of earth shot up into the air, and the first quadrupeds to enter the killing zone walked through the falling debris apparently untouched. Then a fifty-ton cyborg vanished in a clap of thunder as a smart shell corrected its glide path, struck the quad’s hull, and detonated the missiles loaded onto its racks.
Meanwhile, as salvos of surface-to-surface missiles flew back and forth, a seemingly impenetrable matrix of computer-directed energy beams reached up to intercept them. Many exploded prematurely and rained hot metal onto the battlefield below, but a few made it through. Ramanthian tanks erupted in flame, weapons vanished in puffs of dirt and smoke, and thunder rolled across the land.
There was a series of loud cracking sounds, and the ground shook, as a clutch of missiles hit the antenna array three hundred units to Dontha’s right. The explosions were not only loud but somewhat unnerving. The Ramanthian refused to flinch, hoped that the officers grouped behind him would emulate his example, and thereby steady the troops.
Now, as both groups started to close with each other, the advantage seemed to shift slightly as packs of the smaller two-legged cyborgs joined their larger cousins and attacked the Ramanthian tanks as teams.
Dontha watched in amazement as a quad lost a limb to a missile but continued to drag itself forward while a pack of T-2s guarded its flanks. The larger cyborg fired, a tank blossomed into a red-orange flower, and jerked spasmodically as the ammo stored inside its hull cooked off.
But then, just when it looked as if the scales were tipping toward the Legion, help arrived from on high. Contrails clawed the clear blue sky as two flights of Ramanthian fighters entered the atmosphere, fell on the Confederacy fly-forms like birds of prey, and immediately sent two of them spiraling into the ground. In the meantime, those aircraft not engaged in the aerial dogfight were free to skim the surface of the battlefield and fire their missiles at the Legion’s quads before circling around to make another pass.
The airwaves crackled with static as the cyborgs used electronic countermeasures to confuse the incoming weapons, and launched surface-to-air missiles, but the damage had been done. A fighter belched black smoke and vanished behind Hagala Nor, but that didn’t make up for the loss of two additional quads, and Kobbi had no choice but to order a retreat. It was an orderly withdrawal, with designated quads serving as antiaircraft
batteries while others worked to suppress enemy tank fire. In the meantime, rescue units dashed in to pull brain boxes, salvage-damaged T-2s, and pick up stranded bio bods.
Both sides had taken heavy casualties, but Dontha was gratified to see that only half of the cyborgs that had lumbered into the battle continued to be operable as the engagement came to a close. The Ramanthian’s only regret was the fact that the fighters had to hold nearly half their fuel in reserve in order to reach orbit. That meant they couldn’t linger and inflict even more casualties. Still, the engagement had been successful, and Dontha could return to his command center secure in the knowledge that the Pincer of Steel remained undefeated.
ABOARD THE LIGHT CRUISER WORBER’S WORLD
The cruiser’s bridge was large and spacious. The command crew sat in a broad semicircle facing the bow. Captain Marta Wells, their commanding officer, occupied a raised platform directly behind them. Commodore Marvin Posson and Teeg Jackson were seated in two of the six seats that curved along the rear bulkhead. The atmosphere was thick with tension, and all eyes were riveted to the screens that tiled the forward bulkhead. The Confederacy task force had been in hyperspace for more than a week by then, and as Posson’s ships prepared to enter the Savas system, the ranking naval officer wished that he could forever hide the vessels rather than expose them to the dangers that probably lay ahead.
Commodore was a temporary rank, one that would probably be taken from him once the mission was over, but the responsibility was real enough. Posson’s task force included a new world-class cruiser, two destroyers so old that his mother had served in one of them, and a couple of Chien-Chu Enterprise–supplied transports that had formerly been slated for the scrap yards.
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