by J. J. Holden
“It is what it is,” he said, and ignored his assistant’s curious look.
He grabbed his gear and headed toward the mustering point. When he arrived, he saw not only a battalion of Timber Wolf troops, but about the same number of Sewer Rats—they had mustered en masse in support of their Alpha.
He found that Kodiak Band had assembled a mortar company and a cavalry company, along with their Band’s battlecars. No Diamondbacks were there—which he’d deal with later, and not to their liking—but Puma and Wolverine had each sent a company, too.
Carl grinned. That gave him a light regiment to work with, along with a company of armed and armored vehicles and a mortar company. Not bad for short notice. He gathered the officers and spelled out the plan.
“Battlecars will run interference, hitting targets of opportunity and any artillery or mortar squads that decide to join the fight. The rest of our troops will fan out northwest of Harrisburg, keeping a heavy screen ahead of the main body. Engage any enemy that wants a fight. Radios are being issued to each of you, out of Timber Wolf stocks. We’ve been accumulating them through trade with the Falconry, and I’m glad we did despite the cost. My Guards Company and I will be on a separate mission. If you find guerrillas, whether Night Ghosts or Free Republic units, bring them in or support them if they’re engaged. Ideally, we will push the battle momentum away from the Mountain in this region, crippling them and then fading away. Any questions?”
There were a few questions about minor things such as who would provide the battlecar fuel, radio frequencies to use, and so on. Within an hour, though, the commanders had been briefed on their individual goals and operational areas, shown the maps with the known data, and everyone was as ready as they could be. The rescue team-turned-army headed for Harrisburg and the chaos beyond. Carl and his company would be the last to leave, with the other units sweeping aside any obstacles between him and where Sunshine was being held, but they’d avoid that area themselves entirely.
By 8:00 a.m., Carl and his company were within a half mile of Sunshine’s reported location, and he called for the unit to dismount. She was held on the reverse slope of a small hill, their rear blocked by a larger, steeper hill. He gathered his three platoon commanders.
“First platoon, sweep west and approach through the glen. Second platoon, to the east, coming up through the copse of trees. Third platoon and I will first engage up the forward slope. We may surprise them, but we’ll probably just get pinned down. That’s when your two platoons will sweep in on them from either side. Make sure your troops know that if Sunshine is harmed, the one who did it is going to regret it.”
Soon after, he and Third platoon moved up until they reached the forward slope, then began the uphill advance as quietly as they could. They were halfway up when shots rang out, and a cry from one of his troops told him the enemy fire was accurate. Carl and his unit dove prone. “Advance by pairs,” he shouted. “Fire at will. Keep their heads down.”
The next several minutes were harrowing. Fire, duck. Jump up, run, dive into the dirt. Repeat again and again. They weren’t too far below the crest, now, and the enemy fire became withering. Dammit, he was pinned tight. If it weren’t for the other platoons, he knew, it was very possible he’d lose this battle. Then again, he did have the other platoons, and he grinned savagely. Any minute now, they’d pour into the enemy from either side, and that would be that.
Carl heard a riot of noise as the two flanking units engaged the hapless enemy, and Carl leaped to his feet. “Charge,” he cried, and Third platoon followed him up the hill. Scattered fire came at him from the crest, but it was almost random, as the defenders were beset from three sides.
Then he reached the top and hit the dirt. His unit dropped down to either side of him, and from the cover of the hill’s crest they fired down the reverse slope into the knot of surviving enemy soldiers below. It was all over in another minute.
When the shooting petered out, Carl rose to his feet and snarled at the corpses below. Those bastards had found out they weren’t invincible just because they had better gear.
The search for Sunshine didn’t take long. After checking the obvious places, a fighter had stumbled across her in a shallow depression, which the Mountain soldiers had dug. They had gathered wooden poles and bound them together to form a lid, and rocks sat on the lid’s four corners.
Carl looked down into the shallow pit and his jaw dropped. Sunshine was pale and covered in a sheen of sweat. She looked half-dead. Then he saw why such a feeble prison had been enough to keep her there. Her right leg had been cut off below her knee, and although the stump was wrapped, the bandage was filthy. Flies buzzed all over it.
“Good Lord, save her,” he shouted, shocked. He turned to his fighters. “Get her the hell out of there. Where’s the damn medic?”
“Right here, sir,” a woman said. She stepped forward and helped the others remove the poles and pull Sunshine out. They set her down next to the pit, and the medic removed the bandage slowly. Underneath the filthy layer of fabric, the wound was covered in dirt and dried blood. A simple tourniquet above the knee had kept her from bleeding out, but below that point her leg was a grayish-blue, tissue dead from the lack of blood.
“Shit. Okay, get on the radio. Divert one battlecar here to pick her up. She and I will go back to Harrisburg. Notify Kodiak’s commander that she has overall command of the battle.”
Carl’s fighters exchanged glances, but said nothing. It was out of character for Carl to leave in the middle of a battle, but apparently no one felt like it was a good idea to challenge him on it, which was just fine with him.
When the car arrived, his troops carried Sunshine down to it as gently as they could and set her in the back seat. That required the top gunner to step out, but too goddamn bad. Carl hopped in the front passenger seat. “Harrisburg, as fast as you can without bouncing her around. Move out.”
The car pulled away. Carl, looking back at Sunshine’s unconscious form in the back seat, saw his troops staring after the car, but he didn’t care. Let them be confused about his leaving mid-battle. Sunshine was an Alpha, he told himself, and her safety was a Liz Town priority. Plus, he had left the warband in good hands with Kodiak’s commanding officer. They’d be fine.
The drive back to Harrisburg, which had better medical care than Liz Town, felt like the longest quarter hour of his life. The gates were open already as the car approached across the bridge, and a small crowd awaited him on the far side. They directed him to a nearby building that had once been a medical clinic, and now would again. When the car pulled up in front of the clinic, another crowd was waiting, this time with a gurney and a bunch of wheeled supply trays. Carl was gently shoved aside as they got her on the gurney and wheeled her into the clinic.
Carl was ordered to wait in the lobby, and he had wanted to argue but realized every second spent fighting with him was another second they weren’t treating Sunshine, so he had reluctantly stayed where he had been told.
He waited, and waited, but no one had come out yet. He was just about to force his way through the double doors that led to the medical rooms when a woman in scrubs came out and motioned to him. He practically jumped to his feet. His pulse pounded as he awaited her news.
“Alpha. Good news and bad. The good news first—she’s alive and stable. The bad news is that she has sepsis in her leg above the point of removal. Much of her leg above the amputation point has become necrotic due to lack of blood flow.”
“How bad is it?”
The doctor coughed once into her hand, awkwardly. “To put it simply, Carl, it’s the poisons from her leg decaying that have made her ill, and the shock had already weakened her. I don’t believe there was anesthesia used during the procedure. I should tell you, people often die from the shock of a severed leg.”
Carl clenched his fists at his sides. “So what are you doing?”
She nodded and put one hand on his arm, reassuringly, ignoring his evident anger. “We’ve give
n her morphine to ease the pain. She’s regaining consciousness, but she’s in an altered mental state… She’s high.”
“So she’ll be okay?” Carl could hear the desperate hope in his own voice.
The doctor shook her head. “No. To save her life, we must remove the necrotic portion of her leg, about mid-thigh. Otherwise, I guarantee you that she’ll die within a few days at most without surgery, due to sepsis and gangrene. In the old days, we could have done more, but those days are gone.”
Carl clenched his jaw. “Take the leg off, but make sure she doesn’t feel any pain.”
“Once we give her the chloroform, she won’t. Do you want to talk to her, first?”
“Of course.” He pushed past the doctor and through the double doors into the hallway beyond. Sunshine’s room was obvious from the noise within, the only activity in the building, and he stormed in without knocking.
Startled, one of the nurses tried to get in his way, but he put his hands on her shoulders and deliberately moved her aside, his eyes boring holes into hers as he did. She didn’t make any further effort to stop him.
Carl stepped up to Sunshine’s bed and put his hands on the railing. She looked like shit. He forced a smile anyway. “Hey, Sunny. How you doing?”
“Been better,” Sunshine said, her voice ragged. “Asked for a larger dose of morphine.” She took a shallow breath, and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry I was so angry at you. Can you forgive me?”
Carl took a deep breath, mind racing. This was not the way he had envisioned this going. “Of course I forgive you. You weren’t wrong to feel pushed aside. I did put you second. But I’m not going to let them give you that dose you asked for, Sunny.”
“Carl, please don’t stop me. I can’t lead the Rats like this. They won’t follow a cripple, and it’s not right to ask them to support me when I can’t contribute. There’s not enough food or supplies to go around.”
Carl closed his eyes tightly and thought of the supplies he gave to the Free Republic refugees. That’s some shitty irony right there. Opening his eyes, he said, “I swear I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. You’ll be okay.”
Sunshine’s eyes welled up and a tear streaked down her dirty cheek, carving a path through the grime, and Carl felt his heart break at the sight. She said, “I can’t be a burden, Carl. I’m the Rats’ responsibility, and you know that. You’ll have grief from every other Band if you take care of me when so many others had to be left to die. There isn’t enough to go around, and you can’t abuse your rank to take care of me. It’s either the wildlands or the morphine, for me.”
Carl was silent for a long moment, staring at her. She was right, of course, and he hated it. He studied every feature of her face, beautiful despite the dirt and blood and bruises. She was a light in a dark world. He knew what he had to do. It was what he had really wanted to do for a long time now, anyway. “It doesn’t have to be the Long Walk or the big sleep. There’s another way. So what, you can’t be a Sewer Rat anymore… but you can be a Timber Wolf.”
Sunshine’s eyes widened a little bit and she struggled to lift her head to get a better look at him, but failed. She looked him in the eyes as best she could and said, “You’d do that for me? You know that’s forever, right? And I’m not sure I want to be a Timber Wolf who never sees her packmate.”
Carl nodded. “Yes, I would do that for you. Forever sounds damn good to me. Sunshine, I love you. I can’t lose you again. I always thought we’d have more time to work it out, but I was wrong. We don’t. Sunshine, say you’ll be a Timber Wolf and when the war against the Mountain is over, I’ll step down as SecState.”
Sunshine kept her eyes on him, her gaze roving over every feature of his face, and Carl felt like he was being interrogated. Of course, he realized, that was because he was.
After staring at him for ten eternal seconds, she raised one eyebrow—an expression that was comfortingly familiar to him. “You’d stop being the Speaker’s right hand?”
Carl nodded, and put his hand on Sunshine’s. It was clammy to the touch, but he didn’t care. “Absolutely. The war won’t last forever, they never do, and I am in love with you, Sunshine. I was a fool before. I didn’t know how much of a fool I’d been until you turned your back on me. I thought it would kill me, when you did that.”
She smiled at him, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. “I did it because it would have killed me not to. I had to move on, Carl. But if you’ll step down as Mary Ann’s right hand… Then yes, I’ll be a Timber Wolf.”
Carl nodded. As the nurse injected something into her IV bag, he said, “They’re going to knock you out, soon. When you wake up, you’ll begin a long, hard road to recover. You’ll stay at my Harrisburg house while you heal, and I’ll make sure you get the best help still available. When you’re well enough…”
She smiled and nodded slightly, eyes still closed.
A moment later, her breathing became regular and slow. She had fallen asleep again. Carl turned and saw the doctor standing behind him. “Make sure she lives.”
She nodded, then shuffled him out of the medical room out into the lobby.
He watched the doctor go back inside. The helpless feeling that washed over him then was entirely unfamiliar, and he hated every second of it. The next few hours took an eternity.
* * *
1045 HOURS - ZERO DAY +385
Frank stared in awe at the troops arrayed outside of Clanholme. A battalion of Clan fighters from various Clanholds, one from Clanholme itself, and one of Taggart’s loaned battalions. The regiment was supported by half the medically trained people in the Clan… and there were two dozen wagons loaded to set up a field hospital. Cassy’s call for help from the ’vaders of northern Pennsylvania had borne unexpected fruit, and they had sent twice that number of wagons heavy-laden with jarred and dried foods. A dozen battlecars were lined up in the rear.
But what grabbed Frank’s attention the most was four freaking cannons. Artillery looked even more impressive up close, he mused. Each piece needed a team of horses to pull it, and two more wagons for each were loaded with shells. They had all been rummaged from the same depot they had used to resupply their ammo and rifles, but he hadn’t actually seen the artillery before. He let out a long, low whistle.
Michael chuckled. “Yes, sir, those are impressive field guns. They’re more than adequate for taking out emplaced armor units, unless they have M1s—and maybe even then. Recon says we’re going to face only Humvees and Oshkoshes, and a scattering of other LFVs. Light fighting vehicles. Not even a dozen in total, although they’re all Strykers and Bradleys, which sucks. Those are emplaced behind barricades facing north.”
Frank nodded. “Until those vehicles are taken out, it’ll be hard to assault the target. These things,” he said, nodding his head at the lethal artillery, “ought to help with that.”
Michael said, “We have the GPS data on each emplaced unit, thankfully. We’ll demolish those before going in. It’ll create a smoke screen, as well.”
“What of the civilians?” Frank turned to look Michael directly in his eyes.
Michael shook his head and said nothing. Frank nodded, frowning. Damn—that would be terrible, but it was unavoidable. The Mountain couldn’t be allowed to finish fortifying the Gap. It had been the Confederation’s southern strong point, before being conquered, and it controlled the best river crossing for miles in either direction.
Frank decided to change the subject. “How are the electronics on these artillery things still operational?”
“Ethan said most of the components are modular, and units for field repairs had been stored in mylar bags. He said the warehouse structures themselves also shielded a lot of the EMP energy, though not enough to prevent the onboard electronics from frying. We’ve swapped them out for some of the spares.”
“Interesting. And very fortunate. Alright then, let’s move out. Michael, you have command.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Michael turned, then shouted, �
��Move out!” His voice carried crystal-clear across the field, and the various officers repeated the call. Slowly, the force lumbered forward.
It took half an hour for Frank and the other rumbling battlecars, last in the huge line, to finally move out. The troop column stretched out in front of him as far as he could see. It was kind of strange how long it took a unit to assemble, or to move out, or to get ready for a battle. Yet the battle itself always seemed to blur by at the speed of light.
“Nine parts boredom, one part terror,” he muttered. He couldn’t remember the actual quote, but that covered it just fine.
He had spent that time reviewing the strategy for the upcoming battle. Frank and the other drivers were more or less on standby, since a town was a deadly place for vehicles, if the buildings were infested with well-equipped infantry, and the area outside of town was threatened by the few light armored vehicles the enemy had brought with them. A battlecar made a nice, juicy target to both those forces, Michael had said.
Instead, Frank’s main role would be to contain any breakthroughs the enemy made, protecting the artillery and field hospital from such thrusts.
At Intercourse—now mere wreckage after the Clan destroyed the Empire garrison there long ago—Michael ordered the artillery to stop and set up. The M777 had a range of fourteen miles, Michael had told him, so leaving them so far behind was safe enough that only a small force of guards would be left with them. The rest of the regiment moved on.
The river came into view and, as expected, it was defended. Two light tanks—Strykers, Michael had called them—were barricaded on the far side of the river. The Stryker had probably already seen them with its advanced day-night thermal vision, which Michael had said was effective for over a mile. He had also said some Strykers had deadly 30mm cannons, but these were probably the standard .50-caliber or Mk-19 grenade launcher models, as though that was any better. Worst of all, however, was that the Stryker had advanced command, control, and communications abilities. C3, Michael called it. Compared to anything the Clan could field, it was practically on the level of magic.
