Jump Pay

by Rick Shelley

  While Dem switched to the last of the magazines that he had laid out, he looked farther off for the first time, to the line of men advancing toward the Heggie positions from the west.

  "Watch where you're shooting," he told his men, an unnecessary bit of advice, perhaps, but one he could not restrain. "We've got friends moving in."

  —|—

  The pace of the advance was slower than Joe Baerclau had anticipated. At least, it felt slower with adrenaline pumping and the inevitable edge of fear behind it. It seemed that drill-field marching would have been faster. But the amount of enemy fire had fallen off to almost nothing as soon as the Wasps and Havocs opened up. The Heggie soldiers were far more concerned with staying alive. Secondarily, they tried to bring down the aircraft that were decimating their ranks. The line of advancing Freebie infantry was, for the moment at least, an exceedingly minor concern for most of the Heggies.

  Joe kept both hands on his rifle to keep his shooting as accurate as possible. There were targets out there: a few Heggies who were shooting at the Accord infantry, and others who just exposed themselves to ground fire in their attempts to escape the air attack or to fight back against the Wasps. Twice, Joe warned his men to be careful of their fire, to pick targets while they had that luxury.

  "Keep your heads. Make your wire count," he urged.

  Sixty meters. The line of chain-link and razor-wire fencing had been shredded by the earlier air and artillery attacks. It would not pose much of an obstacle in most spots, though—perversely enough—there were a few sections still standing undamaged.

  One man in second squad went down. Within forty meters of the enemy line, Joe could spare no more than the briefest sidelong glance. A call on the radio told him that it was second squad's medic who had been hit. Al Bergon hurried over to help. He only needed a second to check the man and report that he was dead.

  Two men in fourth squad went down next, including Frank Symes, the squad leader. Fourth squad's medic reported that both men were alive, not too badly hurt, and dragged them back to some slight cover.

  Twenty meters. There was no more artillery fire coming in. The kill radius of a Havoc shell was twenty meters. The Wasps were pulling away from their last strafing run. For just an instant, there was relative quiet all along the perimeter.

  Captain Keye shouted, "Charge!" over the company channel, a command that might not have been heard in combat for a thousand years. Not a man in Echo Company was confused by it, though. They knew what was needed. They were on their own now, and it wouldn't take the Heggies long to turn their attention back to them now that the Wasps were gone.

  They ran, straining lungs and muscles to the breaking point.

  In first squad, Wiz Mackey went down to his knees. He dropped forward to support himself on all fours, and to present less of a target. "I'm okay," he said on the squad channel. "Just... a... minute."

  Joe went down to one knee himself, fairly close to Wiz, providing covering fire. When he spared himself an instant for a glance, he could see that Wiz was gasping heavily, panting, out of air. Joe was gasping himself. Then Wiz took in one deep breath.

  "I'm okay now," he said, and his voice didn't sound nearly as winded as it had before.

  "Okay, let's go," Joe said. Talking hurt, interfered with breathing. Wiz and Joe were eight meters behind the rest of the line when they got up and started forward again. Bravo, Echo, and Fox companies were crossing the Schlinal perimeter, moving right into the first line of Heggies.

  Armanoc carbines were not equipped with bayonets. Even after several years of warfare, Accord military thinking had not recognized that hand-to-hand combat might yet be something to provide for. Use wire as a bayonet blade, the SOP and training manuals urged. A quick burst of wire will cut better than any knife ever forged. Joe had used that line in training, but he had always had his doubts. Fifteen or twenty centimeters of cold steel on the front end of a rifle struck him as an exceptionally good idea.

  From their positions just behind the line, Joe and Wiz—and perhaps twenty other men along the front—were able to continue providing covering fire for the men who were more closely engaged with the enemy. Many of the officers, and more than a few platoon sergeants, held back, on orders, until Alpha and Charley companies moved up into position and joined the closer battle.

  Joe slipped a fresh spool of wire into his zipper. Whenever he saw a clear target—most no more than two or three meters away now—he let off a short burst, just enough to drop a man. Joe was down on one knee again, presenting as little target area to the enemy as possible.

  More Heggies came toward the fight, pouring out from between the buildings and coming out of doors. Now that the air and artillery attack had ended, the Heggie infantry was returning to the fray quickly. The Accord's advantage faded.

  Joe was changing spools again when a Heggie trooper got clear of the mess in front and leapt at Joe, his rifle held out in front of him in both hands. Joe got his own rifle up to counter the attack, but the force of the Heggie's leap knocked Joe over backward. Both men went to the ground. A knee in the stomach forced the air from Joe's lungs. For an instant, he was unable to do anything. He did manage to keep his grip on his rifle, kept that weapon between him and his assailant. The Heggie was equally reluctant to let go of his wire rifle. But neither man was able to bring a muzzle around to face his foe. Without wire in the chamber, it would have done Joe no good in any case.

  As soon as he was able, Joe tried to roll the Heggie off of him, pushing upward with his right arm and drawing his left arm back, just a little. At the same time, he brought his right knee up. He didn't connect with the Heggie's groin, his target, but the shift of weight was enough to roll the two men to the side, though not enough to free Joe of his attacker.

  The Heggie pushed back, trying to regain his position on top. The two men's helmets butted together. Joe could make out the face of his opponent through the tinted visor of his helmet. Heggie infantry helmets were not routinely equipped with faceplates or the sophisticated electronic displays that Accord helmets had.

  Again, Joe pushed, trying to roll his foe over. This time he moved toward the right. When the Heggie countered, Joe let go of his rifle's pistol grip with his right hand and grabbed for his knife. Before the Heggie could adjust to the change in tactics, Joe had the blade in the man's side.

  The Heggie stiffened, then went limp, collapsing on top of Joe.

  His weight seemed intense. Joe made one attempt to push the body off of him, but the effort was too much. He couldn't force in enough air. The light disappeared and Joe lost all awareness.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dem Nimz moved all of his men to the north wall. Fredo took half of the squad, and they jumped to the next roof on antigrav belts. The two halves of the squad combined their fire then, concentrating on the avenue between the two buildings. They managed to contribute to the fight without having a single round returned for another minute or more. It was apparent that no one on the ground had any idea where the fire was coming from.

  Eventually, though, someone looked up. A shouted warning on the ground led to a sudden flurry of gunfire directed at first the one roof and then at both. Heggies moved for cover, to the east end of the buildings and into doorways. The reccers pulled back from the parapets for a moment.

  "We move?" Fredo asked Dem.

  "No," Dem replied. "Spread out along the walls. On my count, everybody drop a grenade over the edge. Give them something to think about."

  One, two, three. The grenades went out. By another count of three, they exploded, twelve blasts that sounded as one. The reccers moved back to the edges of their roofs and looked down. Just below them, there were no Heggies left on their feet. Forty or fifty bodies, few of them whole, were clustered together. Most of the Heggies had been moving toward the ends of the buildings. The pattern of bodies was almost an image of an hourglass.

  The reccers brought their rifles up again, finding targets farther off, left and right. The
y had only another twenty seconds of clear shooting before more of the enemy took them under fire. A rocket-propelled grenade arched up toward the roof where Dem and his half of the squad were. It went high and hit fifteen meters behind the reccers, rolling farther away before it exploded. All of the reccers had time to drop to their stomachs before the explosion. The shrapnel arched over them.

  "Now it's time to move," Dem said as he got back up to his knees. "Fredo, cross to the far side of your roof. See what's there. The rest of us will go east, then north. On belts."

  Lateral movement was tricky with the belts. The only effective way that the reccers had found was to jump at an angle, switching the belts on as they jumped. The gyro stabilizers needed a second to force a man upright. Further manipulation of the drive units themselves took care of the rest.

  No one spotted Dem and his companions as they made their first leap.

  "Hold on. Let's give those mudders our greeting card," Dem said after they landed. There were clusters of Heggies in the lane they had just leapt over, clustered at the ends of the building the reccers had just left. A couple of the Heggies were firing down the lane toward the 13th. More were watching the roofs where the shooting had been coming from. The rest were waiting their turn—or waiting for an order to advance down the avenue where so many of their comrades had been killed.

  Dem and his men started with a volley of grenades. Before those exploded, the six reccers all opened up with their rifles—one Dupuy cough gun, four Armanoc zippers, and Dem's XAG-1 rifle.

  "I think this thing is penetrating three layers of net armor," Dem said. He had his link to Fredo open, but he was speaking more to himself. "Through both sides of one man and into the next." Of course, that was at a range of no more than thirty or thirty-five meters. "We get everyone equipped with these and nobody will stand up to us."

  "One battle at a time," Fredo said. "There's a lot of work left here."

  The reccers had only a few seconds of grace before they were spotted this time, especially Dem's group. Farther back from the front, the Heggies they attacked looked up more readily.

  "Time to jump again," Dem told the five men with him. There had still been no casualties in the squad.

  " 'Bout one more jump is all we have on these batteries," one of the others said. "Let's make it to someplace besides a roof."

  Dem hadn't yet considered abandoning his rooftop strategy, but he hesitated long enough to think about the suggestion. "You're right, it is time for us to get back to ground level," he conceded. "But we'll jump to that next roof east, then go down the stairs. It's about time we made some big noises. Find something very explosive to touch off." Then he switched channels again, to let Fredo know what they were going to do.

  "You're going to be on your own for a bit," Dem said. "Work east and north. We'll rendezvous as soon as we can."

  "Just let us know when you're going to put a building into orbit," Fredo said. "I don't want to be on the roof when you do."

  "I've got your blips on my visor," Dem said. Then he notified the other squads in his platoon, and the other recon platoon sergeants. All of them had also infiltrated the Heggie base by this time.

  Several grenades tossed over the side of the building marked the farewell for Dem and his companions. While the explosives were going off in the lanes on the north and west side of the building, they ran across the roof and launched themselves toward the next building east. It was quite clear that this would be their last belt jump for at least four hours. Half of the team heard the low-power warning on their belts sound before they landed.

  The door leading from the roof into this building was locked. Dem stuck a small chunk of plastic explosive over the lock and blew it. Inside, they found an open stairway leading down along the side wall. This warehouse seemed to be void of Heggies. At least, no one was visible from the stairs, and no one shot at the reccers. The building consisted of one large open space, fifteen meters by thirty and ten meters high. The lanes between stacks of supplies were two meters wide, enough to allow forklifts to maneuver. Two of those were parked at the end of adjacent aisles.

  Halfway down the stairway, Dem paused to survey the interior. The other five men took up defensive positions, their weapons spread to cover the most likely avenues for Schlinal workers or soldiers.

  The contents of several stacks were obvious: missiles for Boems and shells for Novas. The rest of the stacks consisted of crates, and there was no way for Dem to tell from a distance what was in them. The only legends on the crates were numbers.

  "They do have tanks somewhere," Dem whispered. "Where there's shells, there's guns."

  "How much of this stuff you figure we can cook off?" Coy Mueller asked.

  "Let's see what's in the crates first," Dem said. He started down the stairs again, moving quickly. At the bottom, Dem used hand signals to indicate where he wanted each of his men. "Pry open a few crates. Those numbers on the first line look to be part numbers. Identical crates, identical numbers—should have identical contents."

  The six men fanned out quickly. Dem used his belt knife to pry open the nearest crate. It contained rocket-propelled grenades. He helped himself to a half dozen. Dropping his visor for a minute, he said, "Somebody find launchers for these grenades. We can use them later."

  There were several crates of launchers in the next stack. Each of the reccers took one launcher and as many of the RPGs as he could carry.

  Five minutes of searching gave the team a good idea of what the warehouse contained. Five minutes of more delicate work let them arm a dozen of the Boem missiles and aim them at other stacks, mostly at the tank shells. Strategically placed shaped charges would, if everything worked properly, ignite the rockets. The men pulled safety pins from the heads of as many missiles and shells as they could, arming the explosives.

  "Give us enough time to get the hell away from here," Coy said when Dem started sorting through his selection of fuses.

  "Remember, we're going to be on foot," Abe Junger added. "No rocket man stuff."

  "The only caps we've got enough of are five-minute," Dem said. "That's going to have to be time enough. Coy, you check that door on the east. Make sure we're going to be able to get out of here before we clip these caps." He didn't want to get caught in a firefight at the door of the warehouse once the timers were activated. "Abe, you check the door on the north, just in case we need a different way out." Those were the only two exits that Dem had spotted.

  Dem and two of the remaining men put the timed caps in place on the charges, but they waited for reports from the doors. Both were clear—clear enough for reccers.

  "Abe, move around to the east door," Dem said. "We'll take that." He watched until Abe was as close to the other exit as Dem was. Then he nodded at the men with him. Very quickly, they clipped the fuses to arm the charges they had placed.

  No one needed an order to run for the door.

  —|—

  Mort Jaiffer pulled the dead Heggie off of Joe Baerclau. At first, Mort thought that the Bear was also dead. He knelt next to the platoon sergeant and felt his neck for a pulse. The relief Mort felt when his fingers detected a steady beat made him light-headed for a moment.

  "Al, get over here!" he shouted into his radio. "The Bear needs help."

  For the moment, most of Echo Company was out of the fighting. The heaviest action had moved into the avenues between the warehouses and other buildings and, in some cases, inside the buildings. It was a brutal kind of combat, but only so many men at a time would fit in the lanes between the buildings. Mostly, the 13th—and the units coming in from the north and south—were waiting for the Wasps to return and clear out the areas between the buildings. They were fighting a containing action, content to hold their own and keep the enemy from escaping or regrouping.

  Al Bergon ran past a pile of Heggie bodies to Joe Baerclau. Mort had the sergeant's visor up and had already poured water over the Bear's face.

  "I think the heat got him," Mort said. "I don
't think the blood is his. At least I can't find any trace of a wound."

  "He skewered the Heggie right enough," Al said, giving the dead man only a glance. Mort retrieved Joe's knife, which was still sticking in the man.

  "You're right," Al said after he had checked Baerclau's vital signs. "Just the heat. Heat and exertion. He's starting to come around now."

  Joe's eyes opened, but they were not focusing. They seemed to track separately at first, only slowly coming to some sort of accommodation with each other. Joe blinked once, then again.

  "Sarge?" Al spoke loudly, even though his mouth was only a few centimeters from Baerclau's face. "You hear me?"

  Joe blinked twice more, slowly. His head moved a little to one side, then back. He blinked again, trying to force his mind back to alertness.

  "Sarge?" Louder.

  "No need to shout," Joe said, his voice cracking. "I hear you."

  "You took a nap," Al told him. That seemed to go right past the sergeant. "Heat exhaustion and then some. You're dehydrated." Like the rest of us, he thought. He gave Baerclau a drink of water, then swabbed down his face with an alcohol-soaked patch. "Best I can do for now. I'm all out of IV bags. Doc Eddies is on his way up with what he needs to take care of all of the heat casualties."

  Joe took in a long breath that was almost yawn. "How long was I out?"

  "Don't know," Al said. "Mort found you under the Heggie you knifed. Just lie still," he added when Joe tried to sit up. "Don't complicate this."

  "What's going on?" Joe asked as he went limp again. Obeying was much simpler than insisting on having his way.

  Mort gave him the news, as briefly as he could. "Sergeant Degtree's taking care of the platoon for now," he added. "He's the only one left from his squad."

  "What about the others?" Once more, Joe started to try to sit up, forgetting that he had just decided to obey Al and stay down. Al just put his hands on Baerclau's shoulders and held him down until Joe quit trying.