Schultz spat again. From the sounds of the battle in the direction of the spaceport, he didn’t think the Raptors would have anything left.
“We can’t dwell on it,” Hyakowa said. “We still have to get back to the company. Here’s where we’re going.” He transmitted the HUD map with the overlay he’d made showing their route. “Let’s move it out.”
Chapter 16
The advance of the 493rd Battalion of the First Tank Brigade against the Oppalia spaceport ground to a halt by mid-morning. The first wave of six hundred Marines of the 34th FIST had been quickly reinforced by the FIST’s remaining four hundred Marines. Not long after came the 13th FIST and its thousand Marines. The thousand infantrymen, supported by twenty Raptors that were able to fly unimpeded by the badly mauled Diamundean air forces, had killed or damaged fifty-one of the battalion’s 133 tanks. Afraid to launch a direct assault against the Marine positions, the survivors hunkered down under cover and turned their engines off so the Marine infras couldn’t spot them.
If the tankers had known that the infantrymen of the two FISTs were down to twenty-seven Straight Arrows and had no other tank-killers, that sixteen of the Marine Raptors were sitting idle at an expeditionary airfield waiting for resupply of ordnance, and the four Raptors still in the air only had enough power left in their cannons to take out three tanks, they might have been bolder. The Marines of 34th FIST had lost a hundred men killed, another thirty or more wounded. Thirteenth FIST’s casualties were a little lighter. Plasma weapons tend to kill, and most of the Marine casualties were the result of fire from plasma weapons.
It’s a fact: a properly trained and equipped infantryman can go mano a mano with a tank and have a reasonable chance of coming out on top; a thousand infantrymen without tank killers are just so much mincemeat for eighty-two tanks.
But Major Kleidsdale didn’t know the Marines were improperly equipped to take on an armored battalion, much less a full brigade, so he ordered his tankers to take cover. And he gave his tankers orders to make full use of all passive vision devices and to concentrate their fire on Marines carrying rockets. He hoped the Marines would get bored and come looking for his battalion. While his staff wracked their brains trying to come up with a better plan, Kleidsdale listened in on the brigade’s tactical net.
The 19th and 225th FISTs were in full control of the seaport after mangling the 552nd Battalion. Lieutenant Colonel Namur was holding the 687th Battalion in reserve, waiting for one of the other battalions to make a breakthrough that the reserve battalion could exploit. Lots of luck, Kleidsdale thought. The 552nd had faced all four FISTs as they came over the beach and was in even worse shape than the 493rd. Kleidsdale switched to the command net to see what he could learn of the situation on the rest of Diamunde and wished he’d done that earlier.
The rest of the First Armored Division, the Fifth and Eighth Tank Brigades, had mounted up and were on their way to Oppalia! In another hour, two at the most, relief and reinforcements would arrive. The division, Major Kleidsdale was sure, could defeat the Marines. He turned off the radio and assembled his staff. Had he continued listening for a few more minutes, his staff meeting might have proceeded a bit differently.
“Hellcat Flight, this is Hellcat Lead,” said Lieutenant Commander Ragrun, commanding officer of VFA 112, “check in.”
“Hellcat One,” came the voice of Lieutenant Cehawk, the Hellcats second in command
“Hellcat Two,” chimed in Lieutenant Brush.
One by one, in order, the sixteen pilots of VFA 112 reported in. Using all of their vision-enhancing and emission-detecting devices to aid in their search, the Hellcats’ Raptors were flying in combat formation at angels thirty, looking for Diamundean aircraft to engage and destroy. During the four hours they’d been flying they saw sign of many bogies, but none were flying. Every Diamundean aircraft they spotted was on the ground, crashed and shattered by them over the past couple of days. They thought the Marines on the ground in Oppalia should be having an easy time of it with nothing more than a few tanks to worry about.
“Hellcat Flight,” Ragrun said, a chuckle bouncing under his words, “we’ve been given a change of orders. Higher-higher thinks we bounced all the baddies and are wasting our time up here.” He paused a couple of beats to give his pilots a chance to laugh at his wit, then continued, “The First Armored Division has been observed moving out of its base. Higher-higher thinks the spam-cans are on their way to bother our mudpuppy brothers on the ground in Oppalia.” He paused again, pleased with his choice of words. “We are to intercept and convince them they don’t have invitations to that particular party.”
“Turkey shoot!” exclaimed Lieutenant (jg) Dule.
“Bunny hop!” from Ensign Prowel.
“Stand by for tacmap.” Ragrun tapped a series of buttons on his tactical control panel and transmitted the overlay map to his squadron, showing them where they were and where they were going. The pilots acknowledged receipt of the map data.
“Close on me,” Ragrun said, more businesslike. “Prepare to board the express elevator to the ground floor.”
The pilots laughed and cheered. After four hours of looking for bogies that had already been shot down, going after spam-cans that couldn’t shoot back sounded exciting.
Captain Hormujh stood tall in his commander’s position, hips level with the turret hatch of his Teufelpanzer One. His Company B, 261st Tank Battalion, Eighth Tank Brigade, First Armored Division, was given the honor of leading the division to the rescue of the besieged First Tank Brigade in Oppalia. Impatient, he positioned himself behind his company’s lead squad instead of between the lead and middle platoons, as was usual in a tank company column. He wanted more direct control of the point than a company commander normally had. He was in a hurry to get to Oppalia and begin the counterattack. In his opinion, the First Tank Brigade had always been overrated. He thought the Eighth was the best in the whole Diamundean Army. Had the Eighth been in Oppalia when the Confederation Marines came ashore, he believed, no rescue would need to be mounted. And, of course, he thought Company B of the 261st was the best tank company in the entire army. He’d stake his life on it. In his haste to get to Oppalia to demonstrate that superiority, he had already increased the interval between his company and Company A from two hundred meters to a kilometer and a half.
The pass through Rourke’s Hills was less than two kilometers ahead. Rourke’s Hills was an ancient mountain range, eroded down to ridges and hills that rose mere hundreds of meters at its greatest heights. Most of the littoral plain between the hills and the sea was buildup from that erosion. In a straight line, the pass through Rourke’s Hills was fifteen kilometers long. The way the road twisted around the remnant mountains, the passage was closer to thirty kilometers. Aside from his impatience to get to Oppalia to begin the counterattack, Hormujh wanted to get through the pass as fast as possible. The Confederation Navy had full control of the air, and it flew the same kind of aircraft the Confederation Marines did. Intelligence reported Marine Raptors attacking and destroying ground targets, some of which might have been tanks—the intelligence reports were fuzzy on that point. If the Marine Raptors could attack and destroy tanks, the navy Raptors probably could as well, though he suspected the navy pilots weren’t as good at attacking ground targets as the Marines were. Regardless, if Raptors came, he didn’t want to be in the pass when they arrived.
“Baker Two-one, this is Baker Papa,” he said into his communicator. “Speed it up, we don’t have all day here.”
A few hundred meters ahead the lead tank sent up swirls of dust as it accelerated to ninety kilometers per hour. The interval between Company B and the rest of the First Armored Division increased more rapidly. Captain Hormujh decided to disable the battalion circuit on his communicator before the battalion reassembled. That way he could claim he never got the order to slow down that was coming at him now from the battalion command.
The Hellcats had plummeted to angels two and were cruising in a
tight, bomber formation north over Rourke’s Hills. There were several passes through the ancient mountains, but one pass was on an almost direct line from the First Armored Division’s base and the port city of Oppalia. The string-of-pearls had detected the division headed toward that pass. The Hellcats were to fly directly to the pass, then make a starboard turn and head inland until they intercepted the division’s van, then blow the hell out of it.
“Stand by to hang right in two mikes. Mark,” Lieutenant Commander Ragrun said into his squadron circuit. “Confirm.”
“Hang right in one fifty-five,” Lieutenant Cehawk said.
“Starboard flip in one fifty,” said Lieutenant Brush.
“Go right in one-four-five,” came from Lieutenant (jg) Dule. Prowel confirmed. At five second intervals the pilots confirmed receipt of the order. The Hellcats were forty-five seconds from their next maneuver when Ensign Hagg, the most junior and last member of the squadron to reply, gave his acknowledgment. The squadron flew on at four hundred knots.
“On my mark, peel right,” Ragrun said half a minute later. He began counting down to the turn. “...three, two, one. Mark!”
The Raptors of VFA 112 peeled off to the right onto an eastern heading.
“Tally ho!” Lieutenant (jg) Blackhead suddenly cried.
“Fish in a barrel,” Ensign Cannion shouted simultaneously.
Below them, traveling at a high speed through the pass, were forty or fifty tanks.
“Angels four, turn about,” Ragrun ordered, no humor in his voice. The pass was narrow here and had frequent turns. If the Hellcats were going to strike the tank column below them, they’d have to be very careful not to wipeout themselves. “Orbit,” he ordered as soon as the squadrons had reversed their direction of flight and gained altitude.
“Flight one, recon,” Ragrun ordered. He tipped his wings and dropped out of the orbiting formation with Lieutenant Brush on his wing. “Throttle back,” he told Brush. Both pilots reduced speed to two hundred knots. Ragrun dropped into the pass and cut his airspeed even further. He glanced up and grimaced when he saw rock slopes extending a couple of hundred meters above him, then he lowered his eyes and kept his attention riveted on the channel he was following. Here, not much more than a hundred meters above the roadway, the pass was barely seventy meters wide. He had almost no maneuvering room. Brush flew a few meters to his left rear, his eyes locked on the near point of Ragrun’s left wing; he’d follow that wing tip as precisely as he could.
There they were! Ragrun spotted the company of speeding tanks as he made the next turn. All the tank commanders were standing in their turrets. He wished the pass went straight long enough for him to dare breaking Mach; the sonic boom would rattle the cages of those tank commanders. Probably wreak havoc in the interiors of the tanks as well.
Ragrun and Brush flew on past the column of tanks. Part of Ragrun’s mind wondered where the rest of the First Armored Division was. Maybe the First Armored had changed its direction since the report he’d gotten, maybe this one company was all that was using this pass. But most of his mind was examining the pass itself, learning its twists and turns and analyzing how to attack the tanks in it. If his planes came in low for strafing runs, they’d have to fly very slowly in order to give themselves maneuvering room to avoid hitting the walls. The only other choice was the attack they called the “screaming meemie,” which was hard on both the planes and the pilots. But the damn jarheads used the screaming meemie. On one of the few occasions during the voyage to Diamunde that Marine Raptor drivers were allowed in the Hellcats’ wardroom, some of those damn jarheads had laughed about how much fun the screaming meemie was!
Well, Ragrun resolved, no pilot worth his salt was going to let any jarheads claim they enjoyed doing something navy pilots wouldn’t do. At least with the screaming meemie they wouldn’t have to worry about hitting the walls. But where were the rest of the tanks?
Captain Hormujh didn’t duck when the Raptor flight zoomed overhead. He merely glared up at them until they disappeared around the next bend. If they came after his tanks again, they were in for a big surprise. If the Raptors were going to attack in this section of the pass, they’d have to fly very slowly. He spoke a few words into his communicator, then looked to his rear and had the satisfaction of seeing five of his tank commanders lifting assault guns from the interiors of their tanks and mounting them on top of their turrets. He faced front again and saw two more tank commanders already had their assault guns mounted. He was very pleased with his foresight. He suspected he was the only company commander in the entire division, perhaps the entire army, who realized the value of top-mounted, free-swiveling guns for antiair defense. Other tank commanders of all levels, from company to division and maybe higher, probably believed the propaganda that said the planes would fly too fast for the guns to hit them without extensive radar and computer guidance systems, and that the tanks’ armor was strong enough to defeat the weapons carried by the Raptors anyway. Here, certainly, any man who knew how to press a firing lever could hit an aircraft. And Hormujh didn’t believe the Confederation pilots would bother attacking a target they couldn’t damage.
Yes, those navy pilots would be in for a surprise if they dared come back at Company B of the 261st.
Where was the rest of the division? The question wouldn’t leave Ragrun alone during the short flight back to the orbiting squadron. It almost interfered with his ability to mark his tacmap. But “almost” didn’t count, and the tacmap was ready when he and Brush resumed their positions in the formation. All business now, he briefed his squadron.
“Hellcat Two, take Division Four east and find the rest of those tanks. We only have one company down there, our orders are to go after the division.”
“Roger, Hellcat Lead,” Lieutenant Cehawk said. “Division Four, on me. Let’s go get ‘em.” Four Raptors peeled out of orbit and flew east, gaining altitude and speed as they went.
Ragrun didn’t say anything to Cehawk, he continued issuing orders to the rest of his squadron. “Divisions One, Two, and Three, stand by to receive tacmap.” He pressed the button that transmitted the tacmap. He continued without waiting for receipt acknowledgments. “You can see where we are and where they are. It’s narrow in there. I don’t want to risk losing anybody because his speed was just a little too high or he was aiming too carefully and wound up running a wall. We’re doing screaming meemies, by flight in division waves.”
He was interrupted by a few groans. “I hate screaming meemies,” Ensign Franks moaned.
“Belay that, people. It’s the only reasonable way. First Division will be the first wave. Flight One will hit the head of the column while Flight Two hits the rear. Then Division Two. Flight Three will hit just behind the head of the column while Flight Four hits the center on a ten-second delay. Division Three will do the same for the back end of the column. Fifteen seconds between divisions. With any luck, we can kill that entire column in three passes. On my mark, break orbit, angels ten. Three, two, one. Mark!”
The twelve remaining Raptors angled away from each other out of the orbiting formation, then powered up for a steep climb. When they reached angels ten, they were almost directly above the tanks in the pass.
“Remember,” Ragrun gave his final orders, “fifteen seconds between divisions. Division One, tally ho!”
The four Raptors of Division One heeled over and screamed almost straight down toward the tanks in the bottom of the pass.
At angels four Brush swiveled away from his flight leader and twisted in a 180-degree turn so they flew head-to-head.
At angels two, Ragrun locked his sights on the lead tank and pressed his cannon trigger. The cannon spat out seven plasma bolts before the dive pullout took over and cut the main engine and fired the vernier jets in the Raptor’s nose. The jets stopped the aircraft’s nose-groundward plunge and allowed momentum to carry the tail down. When the Raptor was pointed up almost vertical, the main engines flashed back on and it shot upward. To the
untrained eye it looked like the Raptor hit an unseen wall not far above the heights above the pass and bounced. Twenty-five meters away Brush went through the same fire-and-bounce maneuver.
Nearly a kilometer away Flight Two used the same maneuver to hit the column’s rear tank. Fifteen seconds later Flight Three struck the second tank and bounced upward. Seconds after that Flight Four hit a tank in the middle of the column. Then Division Four came down and hit two more tanks.
When the lead tank was hit by the cannon fire, Captain Hormujh was too shocked to react for an instant, but only for an instant. Then anger took over. Intelligence had failed to give warning of this tactic. Someone would pay for that failure. If he couldn’t force the issue officially, he’d deal personally with whichever intelligence officer was responsible—and he didn’t care how much rank that officer had. He looked up and saw four specks that rapidly grew in size, obviously four more Raptors coming down for another strike. Before he could speak into his communicator to warn his tankers, the sonic shock wave from the first Raptors hit and staggered him. In the front and end of the column, tanks swerved out of control as the shock wave slammed inside the tanks and shocked the drivers. The force of the blow put out the fires licking from the two damaged tanks.
Before Hormujh could recover, the shock wave from the second flight hit, and hit him even harder. This time tanks in the middle of the column went out of control. The column was in total disarray after the Third Division struck. Despite the rumbling of engines and clanking of treads, the pass sounded eerily silent after the third shock wave passed.
Hormujh recovered and looked up. High above he saw tiny dots as the Confederation Navy Raptors orbited to regroup for another strike.
“Report,” he snapped into his communicator. In seconds he knew the worst. Four tanks were destroyed. Two others were severely damaged, most members of their crews killed.
Steel Gauntlet Page 17
