by Rick Shelley
"An elite corps?" Foss asked.
"We're not sure," Olsen said. "It might be nothing more than the usual Schlinal paranoia of keeping absolute separation between units so that they can't conspire to overthrow their leaders.
"We've had Wasps looking, and the reccers are out as well. We will find the entrances to this underground complex, possibly any second now. It is a matter of some importance that we find the armor before dark, and sunset is now"—he looked at his watch—"two hours and thirteen minutes away."
"Listening gear?" Stossen suggested. "They start an engine, we ought to be able to hear it, even if they've got thirty meters of solid rock on top of them."
"We've got gear on the ground and the most sensitive laser mapping eyes in orbit scanning the area around here," Dacik confirmed. "Just nothing sophisticated enough to do anything more active. Either the Heggies are too deep for either sort of equipment to detect them or they're being cagey as hell. We assume the latter. The second we locate entrances, we'll move our forces to cover them, artillery standing off, infantry in close, Wasps staging overhead. Everything we've got at Site Alpha. There's no way that those Heggie troops and vehicles can break out and do serious damage if we keep our eyes and ears open. At most, they'll have two or three exits. Even if each one can handle three vehicles abreast and they come out racing at full speed, we should be able to stop them almost instantly, block the entrances with their own wreckage. It wouldn't matter if they outnumbered us a hundred to one as long as they've got tight bottlenecks to come through to get at us."
"Wouldn't it be, ah, safer to simply plug the entrances as soon as they're found?" Bones asked. "We've got engineers and a lot of explosives around, don't we?"
"We won't know if that's even feasible until the engineers get a chance to look at the entrances," Olsen said. "The type of rock around here, we simply might not have the capacity to plug all of the exits thoroughly enough to solve the... problem."
"And we have to account for all of those Heggies, one way or another?" Van Stossen made it a question only for form's sake.
"Affirmative," Dacik said. "Destroy or disable. We can't leave those two regiments, men or equipment, behind after we leave in any condition where they might be used by the enemy."
"What does it do to the timetable?" Stossen asked. "I know we're already behind schedule. And how are the 5th and 34th managing?"
"The 5th and 34th are doing their job, holding," Dacik said. "The Heggie defense at Site Charley is active and unified." It sounded like a press release, saying very little, and the general's tones made certain that there were no follow-up questions on the subject. When he wanted them to know more, he would tell them.
"We were supposed to be embarking for our second landing this evening, by now or before," Bones pointed out. "Have you decided what we're going to do about that part of our mission, sir?"
"It has to wait until we finish up this operation," Dacik said. "Since we don't dare try to operate at Site Bravo during daylight hours, it looks as if we'll have to move that forward until tomorrow night." He paused before he added, "And hope that we can get the job done in one night, before daybreak." It was more than just the impossibility of operating during the day there. A one-day delay in the operation was bad enough. He didn't want to contemplate losing a second day. The 5th and 34th might not be able to hold on that long.
"We are getting more intelligence on Site Bravo," Major Olsen said. "More passes with the spyeyes. That's the one advantage to the delay. We'll have a better idea what we're getting into there than we did here." Olsen glanced at the general, then started to say something else, but he stopped before the first word was entirely out.
"The enemy tanks," he said after a moment, holding up a hand to stop any questions while he listened to more of the report over his helmet radio. "The 13th's reccers and SI have found two entrances and think they know where there's a third." Another silence. "The two places they've seen are nearly three kilometers apart, and more than twenty klicks from here, northeast, closer to the shore."
Dacik stood while Bones said, "Three klicks? That's one hell of a big hole in the ground."
"Gentlemen, we have work to do," the general said. "Get back to your units as fast as you can. By the time you've got your people assembled, we should have your orders ready. Jorgen, get enough shuttles down here right now to move everyone into position."
"Shuttles, for twenty kilometers?" Olsen asked.
"I want everyone in position around that complex before dark," Dacik said. "There's not enough time for us to walk that far. Let's get this business finished as quickly as we can."
—|—
Dem Nimz and his recon platoon had been joined by the Special Intelligence team headed by Sergeant Gene Abru for this hunt. Nimz and Abru didn't waste time congratulating each other when they spotted the first of the entrances to the underground facility. They confirmed their discovery less than thirty seconds before one of the other search teams found a second opening. The ramp leading out was sculpted so carefully that a Wasp flying an overhead search pattern at only a hundred meters had missed it completely. The line of the ramp leading down to the entrance pointed almost directly at the late afternoon sun, which meant that there was only the narrowest strip of shadow along one side of the ramp. The walls were angled and smooth.
"A savvy piece of work," Abru commented, studying it through binoculars at a distance of no more than fifty meters from the upper end of the ramp.
"Better than I would have expected from Heggies," Dem said.
Gene nodded. "A hell of a lot of thought and work went into that. They didn't build this in a day, or in a year—if it's all one piece from here to the other exit."
"Makes you wonder, don't it?"
"I'd sure like to sneak a look inside," Gene said. "This has got to be more than just a parking garage, that's for certain. There must be more to it than that."
"Want to try to get in for a look-see?" Nimz suggested. "Your guys and a couple of us?"
Abru wanted nothing more. If his mouth hadn't been so dry from operating out in the heat all day, he would have salivated at the prospect. But after a moment, he took the binoculars away from his eyes and shook his head. This was no time for heat dreams.
"Even I don't think that's possible, and that's saying something," he said, turning to look at Nimz. "They've got to have those entrances covered with enough firepower to wipe out a battalion, and probably electronic alarms as well. A mosquito couldn't get in unobserved."
"Just a thought," Dem said. "There probably won't be much left afterwards, if we stick around long enough to look then."
We will, Abru thought. No way we can go home without finding out what the Heggies have been up to down there. With or without General Dacik's approval, Special Intelligence was going to have a look around.
"We will have to get a little closer, in any case," he said. "Try to see what kind of fortifications they've got at the bottom of that ramp. The more we can learn now, the easier a time the rest of the force will have."
"You're the boss here," Dem said easily. Theoretically, he and Abru were the same rank, both platoon sergeants. But rank meant something entirely different in SI. Even Colonel Stossen treated SI sergeants as equals.
Abru made his dispositions quickly. The SI team and one squad of reccers would go forward for the look. The rest of the recon platoon would spread out to provide cover for them, just in case they stirred up something.
"Keep a sharp eye for mines and bugs," Abru warned everyone before they started out. "Not just to keep ourselves together. The general's sending out a welcome party for these gophers."
The reccers and SI men were all experts at this sort of drill, detecting even the slightest hint of a mine or booby trap. But all of the expertise in the galaxy wasn't enough this time. The lead team had gone no closer than thirty meters from the side of the ramp's end when a perfectly camouflaged mine popped up a meter off of the ground and exploded in front of half of the
reccer squad.
CHAPTER TEN
Simon Kilgore maneuvered Basset two into position. It was still extremely hot inside the turret. He couldn't touch the ceiling without burning his fingertips. He had found that out by accident. Sunset was a few minutes away. There had been some very minor easing in the outside temperature, but the Havoc's air conditioning had not yet caught up with the demand. Three air conditioners now. The extra had been installed in the rear compartment, but close to the one open connection between the back and the front, near the barrel of the howitzer. Jimmy and Karl, the two men in back, said that they could feel the difference that the third unit made.
"I've got a nasty itch about this," Simon said on the crew's radio channel. "Lining us up like ducks in a shooting arcade."
"You and me both," Eustace agreed, the statement almost a growl. "But unless the Heggies have armor stashed somewhere besides the holes the reccers found, we should be okay. Even if they come popping out of those holes, we're outside the range of a Nova right now." Not by much. The Nova's smaller main gun had an effective range of about ten kilometers, half that of a Havoc, and Basset Battery was positioned eleven kilometers from the nearest of the exits from the underground complex.
The 13th's Afghan Battery was slightly closer, and directly in line with one of the ramps. All but one gun of Afghan Battery had been destroyed in the 13th's last campaign, so the colonel had given them the "honor" of having the most direct shot at any Heggie vehicles that came out of that exit. If the Heggies didn't try to come out, Afghan was positioned so that its guns could zero in on the doors at the bottom end of the ramp.
Eustace was more than willing to concede that honor to Afghan, or to anyone other than his Fat Turtle—the name painted on the side of Basset two's turret. Eustace was much happier being a little to the side. A Nova would have to traverse fifty meters of the ramp from the underground door to get high enough to rotate its turret to get a shot at the Fat Turtle. Long before that could happen, Basset two could have a shell on its way—and be moving fast, in any direction.
Captain Ritchie, Basset Battery's commander, doubted that any Nova could get far enough up the ramp to be any threat at all. "There's mudders out there too, with Vrerchs. We might not even get a chance to fire a shot."
Eustace hadn't argued the point, but he didn't accept the captain's optimism either. We don't ever get off that easy, he had thought.
Ponks used a periscope to check the infantry's movement. Shuttles had moved them in to within five kilometers of the entrances. They were moving closer on foot, slowly, as if they expected the enemy to pop right out of the rocks in front of them. Or mines, Eustace conceded mentally. He had heard scuttlebutt about a reccer patrol caught by a bouncer. News like that always traveled fast.
"Jimmy, you be sure to yell if the pace starts to get to you once the shooting starts," Eustace said on a private channel. "Don't be foolish. We don't want you dropping again."
"I'll be okay, Gunny," Ysinde replied. "They fixed me up good as new this afternoon, and the extra cooler does make a difference back here."
"Guys have cooked in these cans even on worlds that weren't as bitchin' hot as this one. Just be careful."
"Yeah, yeah. How long we gonna have to wait here? The boredom's gonna get me long before the heat does."
"Once it gets full dark, I don't think the colonel will wait long, or the general," Eustace said. I sure as hell wouldn't, he thought. If worse came to worst, the Havocs might sit in front of the ramps and pour rounds in through the doorways until there was no chance of anyone inside surviving. The batteries could take turns, spelling each other so that no one would get too hot. It wouldn't be possible for all of the Havocs to get in line with the doors at once.
—|—
Dem Nimz had been talking to himself a lot. He wanted to be back out where the action was going to be, not sitting in a field hospital with a trauma tube locked around his left arm. Fredo had nearly had to coldcock him to get him to a medic in the first place. With his left arm hanging useless and bleeding from a dozen shrapnel wounds, Dem had still tried to help men who were hurt worse that he was. Five of his men had been killed by the mine, and two of the SI men as well. Nearly everyone else in both groups had been wounded. Dem wasn't certain, but he thought that Gene Abru might have been the only man not killed or wounded by the explosion.
Man's got more luck than anyone I ever saw, Dem thought. Abru's battle fatigues hadn't even been touched. I got his load as well as mine, I guess, Dem decided. If he had been standing just a few centimeters to one side or the other, Abru would have been hit as well.
Dem tried to look around, but with the trauma tube anchored next to him and his arm held tightly by the device—all of the way to the shoulder—his mobility was limited. Fredo had been with him a few minutes before, but now he had gone off to talk to the other injured members of the squad. Two men, according to Fredo, had already been treated and sent back to the platoon. Fredo had scarcely been scratched himself. He had been at the far end of the line when the mine went off. Both of his hands had been cut up a little, but no shrapnel had been imbedded in the cuts. Small soakers had killed the pain and would heal the cuts soon enough.
Dem's helmet was sitting on the floor next to him, out of reach, so he couldn't even use the radio or see what the time was—how much longer he had to spend in the tube. Two hours, the surgeon had said, minimum. If the nanobots hadn't transported all of the bits of shrapnel to the surface by then, it might be twice as long.
"Fredo, you'd better take good care of my new rifle," Dem muttered. The experimental weapons couldn't be left lying around, even in a hospital. Dem couldn't protect it while he was being treated, so Fredo had it.
Dem's mind drifted back to the instant just before the explosion. He had been watching the ground closely. It was all bare rock. How had the Heggies managed to conceal a mine on that? He would have sworn that he could not have missed so much as a grain of sand on that surface. But he could see the mine pop up to waist level in his memory. There had been no warning at all, not a glimmer.
"We're not the only ones coming up with new gimmicks," he muttered. Then his system gave in to the medication being released in his bloodstream. He slid into an empty sleep.
—|—
Kleffer Dacik had dragged his staff to the roof nearest the enemy's underground complex.
"We should have gone in with the troops," he mumbled. The entrances weren't even visible from this distance. He couldn't even see the troops who were closest to the nearest ramp, at about twenty kilometers. Only Dacik's aide was close enough to hear.
"We'll have video from the Wasps once they get into it, sir, and more from the line companies," Hof Lorenz said. "Down there on the ground, we wouldn't have a much better view of the whole operation than we will from here." Unless we got right down with the front-line mudders, we wouldn't see anything, he thought. That wasn't something he was apt to say to the general. Dacik was much too likely to decide that he wanted to be that close. Lorenz had spent virtually his entire military career in staff positions. Every superior he had ever worked for had agreed that he had a particular knack for staff work. He worked hard to maintain that evaluation. Staff work brought him as much danger as he might ever desire. On Jordan, it had very nearly killed him.
Dacik pulled his visor down to take advantage of the night-vision systems built into it. The sun had finally set. Evening dusk was rapidly turning to full darkness. Already there was a vivid star field visible overhead, though neither of Tamkailo's two moons was out at the moment. One would rise in a half hour, the other not until nearly two hours later. The two moons combined did not have the surface area of Earth's one moon, and their albedo was slightly lower, but when they were combined with the thick star field around Tamkailo, the night could actually be slightly brighter than a clear full-moon night on Earth.
"Olsen, there any word yet on movement down any of those ramps?" Dacik asked.
"Not a glimmer, sir," Ols
en replied. "We've got bugs in close enough to hear the slightest sound. No matter how silent those doors are, we'd hear residual sounds from inside. A big cave complex like that, the echoes of even a boot scraping on rock would carry if one of those doors opened."
"It'll still be a few minutes before the last of the dusk line fades from the west, sir," Lorenz said. "They'll probably want every bit of darkness they can get. I guess that means before the moons rise." Poor bastards, he thought. The Heggies waiting underground had to know that they had virtually no chance once they came out, and no better chance staying where they were—unless their comrades at one of the other sites on Tamkailo managed to stage a large rescue effort. That was, at best, highly improbable. "Maybe the conscripts will mutiny again."
Dacik glanced at his side. They might, he thought. Then he blinked several times, rapidly. Two regiments of prisoners? They'd be more trouble than they were worth. The prisoners they already had were a major inconvenience. Transporting them off planet would strain the fleet's resources. But they couldn't be left behind. Trained soldiers were a valuable military asset. This entire campaign was designed to deny the Schlinal warlords military assets. All of them on Tamkailo. The general recognized that the notion was primitive, almost inhuman, but it would be far more... expedient to finish this off militarily.
"We'll wait another thirty minutes," he said. "If they haven't surrendered or made their move by then, we'll do what we have to do." None of the men around him made any comment. And no one suggested that they try to establish radio contact with the Schlinal commander to demand a surrender.
"Thirty minutes," Dacik repeated.
—|—
The infantry established their perimeter two hundred meters from the nearest end of the ramps, and left wide avenues in front of those exits. There was little cover available, and the rock and hard clay of the terrain made it impossible to dig foxholes with hand tools.
