by Rick Shelley
"Watch your gees, Kwill," Zel warned. "You black out and you'll get that bastard up your tail anyway."
"I'm... o... kay," Kwillen said, so slowly that Zel knew that Ilsen was pushing himself too close to the limit.
"Flip left, then dive and flip left again," Zel ordered.
Kwillen obeyed without comment and the rocket went past him.
"Now do a one-eighty and head west just above ground level," Zel said. "We'll pick you up in about ninety seconds."
Zel was beginning to feel the pull of gravity himself. He checked his display again before he eased off, ever so slightly, on both throttles. "Odd left and even right," he ordered, and the remaining Wasps of Blue Flight split apart, feathering away from one another as if on display at an air show. All were still climbing, but the sudden blossoming of flight paths helped to confuse the Schlinal missiles. One quickly started to wobble, showing that it had lost its target lock. The rest fell farther behind.
"Ease off and maneuver independently," Zel said next. He tilted his Wasp to the left so that he could spot Kwillen's Blue seven as it streaked west, a black shadow racing over orange rocks behind the Accord lines.
—|—
"They must have tanks here somewhere," Dezo Parks said. He had moved the 13th's command post east, closer to the fighting. Not a single Nova tank had been spotted by the spyeye satellites, by the Wasps, or by anyone on the ground. And there had been no incoming cannon fire anywhere around the base. "It just doesn't figure. Those tanks have to be here."
"Not battle ready?" Bal Kenneck suggested. "This is a depot, a staging area. It is possible that they haven't got them fueled up or stocked with ammunition. The crews might not even be on planet."
"That's too much to hope for," Teu Ingels said. "They had Boems on alert status. There must be at least some tanks ready to roll. The Heggie commanders here can't be that incompetent."
"No rows of tanks drawn up in a parking area," Kenneck said. "If they've got the armor we think they should have for this force, it can't all be indoors. You don't do that with battle tanks."
"At least we don't do it with our Havocs," Hank Norwich said. Though he was commander of the 13th's artillery, he no longer rode a Havoc himself. He only regretted that part of the time. His deputy commander rode Afghan one now. "This is our first time on a Schlinal world like Tamkailo. We simply don't know what the Heggies might do here."
"But after six hours on the ground..." Dezo shook his head. "By now, they could have a dozen battalions fueled and armed, out raising hell. If there are tanks, and there have to be, they've had plenty of time to put in an appearance."
"Again," Bal said, "maybe the crews aren't on planet. They couldn't just stick infantrymen in the cockpits and tell them to learn as they go. Right, Hank?"
Norwich nodded. Then he cleared his throat noisily and the others all looked at him.
"There is another possibility," he said. "Just occurred to me. Even with air conditioning, our men have been having trouble in this heat. Maybe the Heggies have learned that they simply can't use their Novas here. At least not during the day. Do they have air conditioning in the Novas?" He looked to Bal Kenneck.
"I don't know," the intelligence officer admitted. "I'll check with CIC, see if anyone does."
—|—
Even at extremely close range, the Accord battle helmet was secure protection against wire. The helmet itself, and the faceplate, would stand up even to heavy bursts of wire from as close as ten meters. At that range, though, the head inside a helmet could get battered severely, with enough force to cause concussion. At ranges above fifty meters, a helmet might even deflect a heavier slug, such as those fired by Schlinal sniper rifles, or by the Accord's Dupuy RA rifle. The helmet was the most reliable piece of an Accord soldier's protection. Net armor was considerably less secure. In theory, the Accord standard operating procedure was to replace battle fatigues after seven days of exposure, more often under particularly trying conditions. In practice, that wasn't always possible—and in extreme conditions, seven days could be six days too long. Accord battle planners took some satisfaction in the fact that Schlinal practice provided replacement battle fatigues no more frequently than every fourteen days.
Although helmets were sufficient against most of the munitions that an enemy might aim at them, a helmet was a target, and a rocket-propelled grenade exploding within ten meters of an exposed helmet was almost certain to make a casualty of the man under the helmet.
When the Accord advance stopped on the west side of the Schlinal base, the leading companies of the 13th were little more than sixty meters from the enemy. The firefight was fierce. Men in static lines took what opportunities they could to fire at the enemy. Sixty meters was close enough for hand grenades to become part of the action. Smoke, white phosphorus, and fragmentation grenades exploded on both sides. Only the volume of rifle fire kept the grenades from being thrown with any special accuracy.
There were casualties on both sides, extremely heavy for some units. The Accord was stopped cold. They couldn't advance another centimeter without taking prohibitively high casualties.
This stalemate had been going on for nearly two hours, well past midday, when a fragmentation grenade landed twenty-five meters from Joe Baerclau, nearly wiping out his platoon's third squad, leaving only Sauv Degtree and one private alive and unwounded.
CHAPTER SIX
"Tell the flyguys that we're going up on the roofs, Major," Dem Nimz told Teu Ingels. The 13th's 3rd recon platoon had finally made it to the edge of the Schlinal base. The men had pushed themselves to the limit to get through the gap between the 13th and the 97th. They had—somehow—managed to penetrate the Heggie line without being observed during a Wasp attack. Despite the rigorous training that reccers went through and their oft-repeated claim to be able to move within ten meters of an enemy in daylight without being seen, even Dem was more than a little surprised at his platoon's complete success. They hadn't drawn a single shot from the enemy.
First squad had taken a long rest once it could, inside one of the warehouses just behind the Heggie perimeter—four buildings west of the spot where they had infiltrated the Heggie lines. Dem and his men had simply crawled into the most confined spaces they could find, and collapsed. Twenty minutes passed before Dem made his radio call to report what they had done.
"You're inside the base?" Major Ingels asked.
"Yes, sir," Dem confirmed. "Inside a warehouse and unobserved. I figure the safest way for us to head is up. With all of the Wasps hitting this place, my bet is that most of the Heggies, if not all, have gone lower."
"I hope you're right. Give me two minutes to clear this with the air people, then go ahead."
"Two minutes," Dem repeated, then he switched to the squad's channel. This was one of the rare instances when he figured that the radio would be safer.
"We go back outside and use our belts," he told the others. There was an interior stairway visible along one wall of the warehouse, open. But there were Heggies in the warehouse with the reccers. The reccers would be visible far too long if they climbed stairs. Besides, going up on the outside would give them a chance to surprise any Heggies who might still be on the roof. Despite his conviction that the roofs would be unoccupied by now, Dem liked to hedge his bets. Then he told the others squads what they were going to do and cleared them to take whatever action seemed appropriate where they were.
"Anybody on the roof, just blast away," Dem said when he returned to first squad's channel. "Don't give 'em time to let the rest know they've got company. All the racket outside, nobody's going to notice our gunfire."
There were no questions. Dem waited another minute before he gave the order to move. He liked to think that he was the fittest man in the ADF, but six hours on Tamkailo had him wondering about his conditioning. He felt as if he had already run a marathon in full kit.
"Fredo, get back to that door and make sure the coast is clear." Dem waited until Gariston was up and halfway to t
he door before he gestured for the rest of the men to come out from their cover and move in that direction. The team was used to working together. Men watched on every side, alert against the possibility of accidental discovery by their unwitting hosts. The men divided the work naturally, a glance or a hand signal enough to make certain that there was no confusion within the squad.
Fredo opened the door just a few centimeters, slowly, looking out through the widening crack to scout as much of the terrain as he could. To check the other way, he looked through the crack along the hinge side of the door rather than stick his head out in the open. The door was set midway in the meter-thick stone wall, which restricted his field of view considerably. Fredo watched for nearly a minute before he used a hand signal to let the others know that the way was clear.
"Right against the wall and straight up," Dem said as the squad moved. He detailed two men to face outward, covering them from that side. The rest would be facing the building, ready to take on anyone they found on the roof.
The antigrav belts were as silent as Wasps. The squad paced themselves by Dem's rate of climb—one hand on belt controls, the other holding a weapon at the ready. They needed only two seconds to reach the level of the warehouse roof.
It was empty... except for the bodies of four Heggie soldiers, and a trail that showed where the 25mm cannon fire of a Wasp had swept across the roof.
There was a low parapet around the edge of the roof, no more than fifty centimeters high. In several places that parapet had been shattered by cannon fire or rockets. There was also a hole, not quite a meter in diameter, where the wall and roof met, on the west side of the building, near its northern corner. Near the northern wall, there was also a small kiosk where the stairway came out.
Dem used hand signals to position his men—one to watch the door leading to the stairwell, two to cover the north, south, and east sides of the building from the corners. Dem and the other seven men went to the west wall.
Cautiously, Dem raised his head to look at the ground below. There were hundreds of Heggies, perhaps a thousand or more, in the line west of the buildings. But they were all facing west or south, away from the roof where the reccers were, concerned only with the Accord attack coming in from those two sides.
Now what? Dem asked himself. He had not bothered to make detailed plans before. Go up on the roof and see what havoc we can create had been the extent of his planning. To this point, he had been concerned only with getting into position. After that, improvisation. He glanced at the rifle in his hands. And smiled. At least we'll see what you can do, he thought.
"We'll work off to the left first, the men in front of that next building," Dem told the others. "If they do start looking, I want them to look in the wrong place first. Soon as Heggies start to show an interest in the roofs, we hightail it across and jump to the next roof east. On belts," he added after a slight hesitation. That next roof was twenty-five meters from this one.
"You sure we're gonna have enough juice to make it?" Fredo asked.
"There and back again," Dem replied.
He gestured for the men to take their positions and promptly put them out of his immediate thoughts. They all knew what had to be done. Dem moved up to the position he had staked out for himself behind the parapet. Before he could do anything more, though, there was a call for him.
"Nimz."
"Yeah."
"Ingels. You in place?"
"Yes, sir," Dem said. "Just about ready to make things interesting."
"Hold off a bit if you can. Anyone likely to spot you?"
That almost demanded a sarcastic reply. Anyone likely to spot a reccer? Especially after they had successfully sneaked into the center of a Heggie base? But Dem suppressed the urge. "No, sir. We appear to be all alone up here."
"Let's coordinate things then," Ingels said. "We're going to hit those Heggies with everything we've got, all at once—air, artillery, and infantry. We've got to get the men off of these rocks and tie off Site Alpha as quickly as possible. Wait for the air and artillery, unless you come under fire first. When the big guns start, you go to work from behind. There'll be so much hell breaking they shouldn't even have time to look for you."
"How long?" Dem asked.
"Not more than five minutes," Ingels said, mentally crossing his fingers. "Air and artillery, then you. After thirty seconds, we push the infantry forward, all three regiments."
"We'll be ready. I just hope the flyguys and dogs don't knock this building out from under us."
"Turn your locators on so they know where you're at."
Dem hesitated before he said, "Yes, sir." As usual, the reccers had all turned off the beacons that identified them to the mapping system run out of CIC. Without those locators on, they could only be picked up when one of them transmitted. Dem switched his on, then switched channels just long enough to tell the rest of the platoon to do the same. Then he was back to Major Ingels.
"We're set, sir."
"Good. The Wasps are rendezvousing now. Less than five minutes. Out."
—|—
Joe Baerclau felt a tightening in his throat when Captain Key relayed the Word to the platoon leaders and sergeants. It was going to come down to a mad charge after all, across sixty meters of open ground, directly at an enemy that outnumbered them. That was a nightmare to any soldier. There would be little margin for error, all around. The Wasps and Havocs were going to concentrate their fire right on the Heggie perimeter. While they were active, the mudders would have to get up and run right into that mess—and hope that nobody's aim was off, and that the heavy stuff was halted before the mudders ran into a rain of "friendly" shrapnel.
"Fire suppression," Joe whispered, belatedly checking to make sure that his transmitter was off. "With a vengeance."
But then the transmitter had to go back on. He hit the platoon channel and told everyone at the same time. "Wait for the order," he cautioned. "Soon as the bombardment starts zapping them, we go, full out."
Joe looked back toward the west, wondering where the Wasps would come from. After a couple of seconds, he gritted his teeth. Not from that way, he thought. From north or south, so they can rake the enemy line.
He closed his eyes, but scarcely longer than a slow blink. Rake 'em good, he thought—almost a prayer. He opened his eyes and checked the load on his Armanoc. Then he felt for the knife on his belt.
"We're going all the way in, whatever it takes." That was what the captain had told him. There would be no stopping short of the enemy, not as long as a single man was able to move. "We've got to overwhelm them in a hurry, before they have a chance to regroup," Keye had said. He hadn't needed to add, It's our only hope.
Joe looked along the line, a quick glance in either direction. My men, he thought. And then the Wasps were on their way in, from the south, totally silent until their guns started to fire and the first rockets were launched.
—|—
Dem had laid three magazines for his rifle at his side, where he could reach them in a hurry without looking. The test rifle did not shoot wire or rocket-assisted slugs. It shot 20-gram 7.75mm fléchette bullets, rounds with tiny razor-sharp vanes that popped out in flight. The propulsive charge was an antigrav drive, the same sort as was used in the new Corey belts. The thrust was funneled into the rear of the rifle's chamber, with enough power to give the bullet a muzzle velocity of nearly three hundred meters per second. Dem also had a neat little stack of five hand grenades within easy reach. No matter what happened, he would find time to use those five grenades. Even if the squad had to abandon the rooftop in a hurry, he would find the few seconds it would take to throw those grenades.
A deep breath. Burning air. Dem had an instant to wonder whether there was more to the atmosphere than heat, too much carbon dioxide, and too little oxygen—whether there also might be toxic trace elements, enough to add a little chemical burn to the heat.
Too bad we don't have planet-cookers, he thought. They just want all of the Heggie asse
ts here destroyed. If we coulda done it from space, without landing... But that was an idle wish from pulp adventure videos, and then the Wasps arrived, and there was no more time for fantasy.
Rockets and cannons. The Wasps raked the perimeter of the Schlinal base. The first artillery rounds exploded at almost the same instant as the first rockets, an unusually precise coordination of assets. Flames and shrapnel, followed by showers of debris, hurtled into the air to fall back to the ground. Some of the detritus was human flesh.
Dem started firing instantly, raking one section of Heggie soldiers, giving them an entire thirty-two-round magazine. His test rifle's cyclic rate wasn't as great as some other automatic weapons he had used, but it was faster than squeezing off individual shots the way a cough gun required. Before he reloaded, he tossed two of his ready grenades, one as far to the left as he could, the other equally far to the right. Then he ejected the rifle's empty magazine, stuck a fresh one in, and jacked a shell into the chamber.
The range wasn't extreme, wouldn't have been even for a zipper, but the results were still impressive. The vanes of the fléchette rounds went through net armor as if it were thin cotton, spinning, chopping everything in their path. A concentration of bullets seemed virtually to puree flesh. Dem picked one man at random and put the entire second magazine into his back, stitching a line from side to side that cut the man completely in half. Dem's only interest was clinical. It was his job to test the rifle thoroughly.
Two more grenades went out before Dem loaded his third magazine.
The scene below was bloody chaos. The Heggies hadn't had time to think about men behind them on the roofs of buildings that they thought sheltered them. But the Heggies did not simply die. They fought back, as well as they could, against the infantry charging toward them and against the aircraft. Dozens of surface-to-air missiles were launched at the Wasps. Although Dem wasn't paying attention to that phase of the fight, he did note three Wasps hit by those shoulder-fired rockets.
