by Rick Shelley
Wiz Mackey was to Al's right. Wiz had once been a hothead like Pit, but combat and the loss of his best friend had tempered his recklessness. In close combat, he was still the most ferocious man in the squad, but he no longer took unnecessary chances. His anger had tempered him, made him coldly methodical, even in fury.
Mort anchored the squad on the right. He was his usual steady, reliable self. He had always approached his work methodically, as if being a combat infantryman was no more exceptional than being an associate professor teaching introductory courses in history and political science. He had been good at that. He was better at this.
Joe Baerclau was no more than two steps behind the line now, sometimes closer, between first and fourth squads.
Heggie wire started ricocheting off of the rocks around the men of first squad with some regularity. They were still somewhat more than a hundred meters away from the Schlinal rifles, so the wire no longer carried enough momentum to penetrate net armor, and the ricochets would do no more than scratch exposed skin. A direct hit on unprotected skin would be different though.
"Cover!" Joe shouted over his platoon channel, repeating a command that had come over the company channel from Captain Keye.
On the noncoms' net, Keye had additional instructions. "When we start up again, it'll be fire and maneuver, by squads. Keep the jumps short."
Joe gave his orders quickly. The squads would move odd and even. "Start using wire when we go," he added. "Even if we're not close enough for it to do much damage, it'll give them something to think about."
This was no long rest break. Joe had scarcely finished his instructions before the order came to start moving again. He got off a three-second burst of wire as he got back to his feet. His wire had a lot of company. In both directions.
The fight was finally going to be joined at close quarters.
CHAPTER FIVE
All of the buildings in the Schlinal compound had been constructed of native rock quarried near the base. For the most part, it appeared that the builders had used very large square-cut blocks. Even in the buildings that appeared to be barracks, windows were few and small. The only breaks in the walls of the warehouses and other buildings appeared to be doors.
The rusty color of the stone testified to its high iron content. That there were other metals and minerals present was of little interest to anyone on either side at the moment. A foundry and mill had been built on the site. Steel girders and trusses had been fashioned to frame the stone buildings. Stone cut into sheets as much as fifty centimeters thick had been used for roofing. The Accord intelligence estimate was simple: "Left to themselves, those buildings might last as long as the Egyptian pyramids back on Earth. The slightly lower oxygen content of the atmosphere (and low average humidity) suggests that even the interior steel framing might last almost indefinitely." Schlinal construction was not routinely designed to be that permanent. But the use of prison labor and the lack of more ephemeral building materials on Tamkailo had made these exceptions possible, almost mandatory.
It certainly made for unusually solid construction. Those buildings could stand up to a lot of abuse, even the abuse of rocket warheads and artillery shells. Missiles exploded and punched holes, scattering stony shrapnel (more outside than in), but it would take a great many such hits to inflict serious structural damage.
The Schlinal designers of the compound had given little thought to providing a solid defensive perimeter around the base. The installation had originally been built as merely a depot on an otherwise uninviting world, not a base for an occupying force. The mesh fencing had been intended to contain garrison and prisoners, not to keep out an enemy or to provide more secure firing posts. There were automatic weapons positions at the corners, and spaced at wide intervals in between. And small pavilions had been spaced inside the fence to give sentries a place to get out of the heat of Tamkailo's sun. On this world, the pavilions were no luxury, but necessity. But those defensive measures were pro forma, to give soldiers something to do. The Schlinal overlords had no real concern about escaping prisoners. The only escape from penal servitude on Tamkailo was death.
Long before the leading units of the 13th got close to the base perimeter, there were extensive gaps in the fence. Most of the pavilions had been destroyed, as well as those machine gun positions on the three sides of the base that the Accord was attacking.
One unavoidable result of the air attacks was that there were plenty of shallow craters to give cover to the Schlinal defenders, and they were quick to take advantage of them. More were sheltered within and between the nearest rank of buildings. Again, shell damage had provided a few gun ports, holes in the sides of buildings. Other troops were on the roofs now, behind low parapets, many of them armed with rocket launchers to take their toll on any aircraft that returned.
The 13th's Red Flight lost two Wasps within seconds of each other, leaving the flight with only five planes. Yellow Flight lost its third plane of the day. At the moment, Blue Flight was away from the action, heading back to land and replenish munitions and get fresh batteries. The air wing of the 8th SAT and two squadrons of the 17th Independent Air Wing were coming in as well now, attacking the northern and southern sections of the perimeter and striking at targets in the middle of the base. The 97th LIR was attacking on the ground from the south. The 8th SAT was moving against the north side of the base.
On all three sides where they were attacking on the ground, the Accord infantry had closed to within one hundred meters of the Schlinal defenses. It was seven minutes past local noon. The first Accord soldiers had landed five hours and fifty-three minutes earlier. The invasion was already more than four hours behind schedule.
—|—
Up and forward, down and shoot. Concentrate. Wire rifles show no muzzle flashes to guide return fire. Spot likely shooting positions. Concentrate fire on holes in the walls and at the lips of craters on the ground. If you see movement of any kind, shoot. Anything in front of you is hostile. Maybe you won't hit anything vulnerable. Maybe you will. In either case, you'll give the enemy something to think about. You'll reduce the amount of enemy fire coming at you, and you'll make the fire that does come less accurate. The better you do your job, the harder it'll be for the enemy to do his. You know the statistics: hundreds of meters of wire expended for every casualty inflicted. Do your share. And then some.
None of the 13th's troopers really had to think about those things. They were the basics of combat training, instilled through hard repetition and swift discipline throughout the weeks of boot camp, reinforced constantly on training maneuvers in every unit—and brought home by deadly example in actual combat. Recruits were taught to go into training exercises with the battle cry "Kill, kill, kill!" Lectures told them about the evils of the Schlinal system and the dangers to any world that fell to them. The enemy is evil. We are the force of Good in the galaxy. Men being put through long hours of very intensive physical training were especially receptive to such psychological preparation, on deep subconscious levels. Under stress, the mind held to those precepts.
Joe Baerclau felt oddly peaceful. His earlier jitters had disappeared as soon as he was close enough to return fire with some hope of scoring telling hits on the enemy. His concentration was total, balancing the needs of his own fire and movement with the continuing need to keep an eye on what his men were doing. There was no useless radio chatter now. He gave terse instructions, and received them. He took reports and gave them. Each man in the 2nd platoon of Echo Company knew his job. And did it.
Joe moved his aim from target to target, limiting himself to short bursts of wire. He left fire suppression to others, preferring to conserve as much ammunition as possible for times of greater need. Across a 40-degree zone in front of him, he shot at anything that looked as if it might be an enemy soldier. The 13th's forward movement was slow now. A single squad would scuttle forward two or three meters, from cover to cover, while the rest of the platoon provided covering fire. The rest of the comp
anies in the skirmish line were moving in the same methodical fashion.
But the cover of the rock field ended sixty meters from the Schlinal perimeter. Beyond that point, the ground had been leveled prior to the construction of the base. The ground beyond the mossy rocks was a combination of clay and stone, and there was no vegetation of any sort. There was, in particular, none of the moss that had proved so treacherous. But there would be no cover at all for the 13th once they got clear of the rocks.
—|—
Ezra Frain marked one Schlinal helmet in a shallow crater. Very little of the helmet showed behind the soldier's wire rifle. When Ezra first spotted it, there was only a thin sliver of the helmet showing, perhaps two centimeters high in the center. And no rifle. Ezra waited. The Schlinal soldier came up just far enough to squeeze off a short burst and then ducked again. The pattern repeated. The man moved a little to one side or the other before he came up each time.
"I'll get you yet," Ezra said after shooting at the vanishing helmet for the third time. He slipped a fresh spool of wire into his Armanoc, saving the old spool. There were still a few meters of wire on it, too much to waste.
Ezra held his breath, silently counting off the seconds since the helmet had disappeared. Fourth squad moved forward and took new positions. "Let's go," Ezra told his squad.
He started forward without looking to make sure that his five remaining men were moving with him. He knew that they would be, no matter how frightened they might be. While he crawled to the next slight cover, Ezra kept his eyes on the crater ahead. That helmet had stayed down longer than usual this time. Any second now...
When the helmet popped up the next time, Ezra raised himself to his knees and held down the trigger on his zipper, ready to pour an entire spool of wire into the helmet and the lip of ground in front of it if he had to. More of the helmet appeared, pushed back and up as wire sprayed off of it. Wire might not damage a helmet, but the impact would be felt by the man wearing it. Ezra extended himself, getting one foot out in front of him, lifting a little more, trying for a slightly better angle of fire.
Wire from at least two Heggie rifles found Ezra as the man in the crater came up and went down. Ezra didn't see the Heggie fall, dead. More than fifty snips of wire had cut into Ezra at the same time. Some had found the gaps in his net armor. The rest had penetrated it.
Al Bergon saw Ezra go down and stopped firing immediately. He crawled sideways to the squad leader. Before Al got to him though, Ezra Frain was too far gone for help. His eyes were open, expressionless, as Al slid him back to better cover.
Then the eyes closed and Ezra was dead.
—|—
Joe Baerclau swallowed hard when he heard the news from Al Bergon. After acknowledging the medic's report, Joe switched channels to talk to Mort Jaiffer.
"You've got first squad now, Professor. Ezra's dead. We'll run first squad as a single fire team for now, reorganize when we get a chance."
On the other end of that call, Mort squeezed his eyes shut, hard, for just a second. "I hear you." Mort glanced toward where Ezra had fallen. Al had already moved back into his place in the line.
"Be careful, Prof," Joe said.
"Yeah." Then Mort switched to the squad frequency. "Let's spread out to cover the gap," he said after confirming that they had lost Ezra. "And keep your heads down." There was always continuity. The gaps in the table of organization always slid to the bottom of the unit. Whenever an officer or noncom went down, there was always someone to replace him.
In the TO at least.
—|—
Major General Kleffer Dacik and his headquarters staff had landed twenty minutes after the first assault waves. The general had established his command post west of the landing zones for the attack on Site Alpha. With two concurrent operations going on, Dacik had plenty to keep him occupied. During the first hours, he left operational control of the attack on Site Alpha to Colonel Stossen, the senior regimental commander, and then—after Stossen became a casualty—to Colonel Napier Foss, commander of the 8th SAT. Foss had only recently been promoted to full colonel, and he was new in command of the 8th, but he was the next senior man. On the other continent, Colonel Jesiah Kane of the 5th SAT was in local operational control.
"I hope Stossen's not out of commission long," Dacik told Colonel Ruman, his operations officer, after learning that Stossen had been taken to the hospital. "Foss may be good, but he doesn't have Van's experience."
"I've already sent a man over to check with the doctor," Ruman said. "Should be hearing from him soon."
"Van's going to miss this first fight in any case, and that's bad enough." Dacik looked down at the large mapboard laid out on the ground between them. "This whole operation depended on timing, and that damned moss screwed it from the first pair of boots that touched down. There's no way we can make up five hours."
"We knew we'd have to improvise, General," Ruman said. "You emphasized that hard enough. Besides, the 8th and 13th are used to improvisation."
"But it's that much longer that the 5th and 34th are going to have to hold on without reinforcements on the northern continent," Dacik said. "As far under strength as they are, it's going to be dicey as hell."
Colonel Ruman didn't say anything. This entire operation had been dicey from its inception.
—|—
An hour past noon, the Accord had moved its lines within sixty and seventy meters of the Schlinal defensive lines on three sides. Recon platoons from both the 8th and 13th were operating on the fourth, the east, side, to keep the Schlinal garrison from getting out where they could maneuver and endanger the entire Accord line. Sergeant Dem Nimz had the 13th's 3rd recon platoon. SAT recon platoons were twice the size of line platoons, sixty men—at least in theory. None were at full strength for the landing on Tamkailo. Of the four in the 13th, only the 1st recon platoon had a lieutenant, a platoon leader. The rest were commanded by sergeants. Junior lieutenants were in short supply throughout the spaceborne assault teams, and reccer lieutenants had to be a cut above their peers in the line companies. Just as enlisted reccers were an elite within the elite SATs.
Third platoon's four squads were operating independently, not a rare circumstance. Dem stayed with first squad. Sergeant Fredo Gariston was the nominal squad leader. The two men had worked together closely during the 13th's previous campaigns. Each knew how the other thought, what he was likely to do in almost any situation. It made them extremely effective together.
"Best thing we can do is find a way to get in the middle," Dem whispered to Fredo. Both men had their visors up and their radio transmitters switched off. The squad was concealed in a shallow ravine eighty meters from the southeastern corner of the Schlinal base. "Create as much confusion as we can."
"And hope our own people don't clobber us?" Fredo replied. "That place is a free fire zone, if you recall."
"We're not going to be that big a target," Dem said. His grin was tight. "We get in a bind, we can always get our guys to lay off."
"Don't forget, we're not supposed to give the Heggies a chance to capture that new rifle." Fredo pointed at the weapon Dem was carrying. A new rifle: Dem was one of a dozen men giving the weapon its first combat test. It too was a product of the research that the Corey team had done in their hidden laboratory on Jordan. The rifle didn't even have an official name yet. For the moment, it was simply the XAG-1.
"I know," Dem said. "Long as we've got three seconds, we can turn it into something nobody could analyze. In the meantime, it might give us the edge we need."
"We're gonna have to liberate a few Heggie explosives if we're gonna do much damage," Fredo said. "What we've got with us won't do a hell of a lot to those stone buildings."
"So we'll help ourselves. This place is supposed to be loaded with munitions. Maybe we can put one or two of their warehouses in orbit."
Fredo just shrugged. He had seen the pyramids on Earth. His father had been a trade representative, stationed on "the Mother World" for five ye
ars while Fredo was growing up. To Fredo's thinking, it would be as easy to put the Great Pyramid of Giza in orbit as one of these buildings.
Dem called the rest of the squad in close and started giving instructions. He used hand signs more than words. Reccers worked in silence whenever they could. It made them less... conspicuous.
—|—
Blue Flight strafed the Heggie line on the west side of the base from south to north. With Accord soldiers now less than seventy meters from the enemy, the flyers had to be particularly careful. They attacked in a vertical echelon this time, with each Wasp behind and below the fighter in front of him. All six fired in unison, their cannons raking along a hundred meters of the enemy line at a time. There was no escape for the men in their path, no chance for them to turn and fire missiles at the planes.
"Empty your guns," Zel instructed. "We'll turn around and give them rockets on the next pass. Give the mudders a chance to close."
Ten seconds for each pass. As Blue Flight turned west, several rockets came up after them, aimed more from the roofs of the buildings than from the Heggies on the ground. The men on the roofs had been out of the line of fire.
The five Wasp pilots pushed their throttles all of the way forward, shooting straight up, as they keyed in their full repertory of electronic countermeasures. At the moment, their most effective defense was to push for altitude as rapidly as they could stand. If they could get above ten thousand meters, they would almost certainly be able to elude the enemy missiles.
Zel kept his eyes on the heads-up display. That showed each of his Wasps and the oncoming rockets, blue for Wasps, red for missiles. The last plane in the flight was no more than fifty meters in front of the closest rocket, but Blue seven wasn't losing any ground. And, after ten seconds, he actually started to widen the gap.
