by Rick Shelley
Neither of the SAT commanders replied immediately. It was Foss who finally broke the silence. "Frankly, General, I'm not at all certain that we can break through this time, not and have anyone left to meet the newcomers when they get here. I'm down to less than forty percent effectives as of fifteen minutes ago, and Jesiah's been hurt even worse. We might not have the strength to break through this line in less than an hour. Or in a week."
"Find weak points and punch through," Dacik said. "We don't have any choice. We've got to move, and we've got to move fast."
There was another pause before the commanders conceded their assents.
—|—
Overhead, more or less, the Boem S3s of the Schlinal defensive screen had to kill speed to intercept Cetus's Purple Flight, to keep the Bats from sliding behind them and getting a straight shot at two of their capital ships. Purple Flight went to full thrust again as it closed to within missile range of the Boems.
"I want two missiles targeted against each of them," Purple one said. "We'll boost straight through the flight. By the time they get turned around—any that our missiles leave—we should have the distance and speed to outrun anything they shoot after us."
It was the rockets that the Heggies would shoot off while the two groups were racing toward each other that Purple Flight had to worry about. Those would cover the gap in a hurry.
Vign got his targets lined up and waited for the command. First pass: the entire flight would fire its missiles at once. In theory, at least, that would overload the Boems' ECM and missile-intercept capabilities and make it much more difficult for the Heggies to evade destruction.
Both sides fired at once. There was scarcely time for the pilots of either flight to switch their weapons selectors over to the smaller, high-speed, anti-missile missiles that were their only active defense. Tiny electronic decoys were jettisoned almost as quickly to try to deflect targeting systems.
There were a total of twenty-seven unspectacular explosions. Twelve of those resulted from missiles hitting missiles and scattering debris. Nine were exploding Boems. The rest were Bats.
Vign Malmeed did not see them. He had less than a second to realize that Purple six was going to be part of the show.
—|—
"Nimz, I've got to send you and your men out again," Colonel Stossen said. "The rest of the army's got themselves stuck, seven klicks south of us. The Heggies had prepared positions."
"I was beginning to suspect something like that, Colonel," Dem said. "We'da had more Heggies hitting us than the few who did get this far otherwise. What do you want us to do?"
"Get down behind the Heggie line and make them think you're the whole regiment. Raise a little Hell. Distract them enough to let the 8th and 5th punch through."
"Yes, sir."
"And, Nimz... we don't have much time. We could be seeing shuttles and fighters from this new fleet in less than an hour. We need to secure the peninsula first, or at least get our whole force linked up. If you've got enough juice built up on your belts, use them to get south fast."
"We'll do what we can, sir," Nimz promised.
No more than three minutes later, the fifty-four men remaining from the 13th's four recon platoons slipped over the ridge, breaking into two groups and moving apart. Behind them, the line companies on either side adjusted their positions to cover the gap. The reccers moved in two groups, Dem leading one, Fredo the other. Fredo's left arm was in a sling. A medic had treated his wounds, but he needed time in a trauma tube to complete the repairs. But he would not stay behind.
At first the reccers crawled, doing everything they could to avoid showing a silhouette. Schlinal night-vision gear was inferior to the double system that the Accord used, but it was not totally useless. Slow movements, low to the ground, were the best way to trick the Schlinal gear. Having ground that was almost body temperature helped confuse infrared night-vision systems. The contrast was too low.
Once away from the 13th's line, the reccers made their way to the lowest area of ground around before getting to their feet and hurrying south, jogging. It was too soon yet to switch over to antigrav belts. They were too close to the line. Dem wanted to get at least a kilometer south first. That would, he hoped, put them behind any Schlinal mudders posted to watch the 13th.
The reccers saw several Heggie patrols and observations posts. But reccers were trained in movement that won't be seen. The Heggies weren't. In one case, Dem and his men passed within twenty-five meters of a squad of Heggies without being seen or heard. A couple of minutes later, they walked past a Nova, not more than six meters from the tank. There was no sign that either of the Nova's crewmen spotted them, even though the Nova carried better night-vision gear than Schlinal infantrymen wore.
Dem waited until his men were a hundred meters south of the tank before he decided that it was time to hurry along. "Don't get carried away just 'cause we're on belts," he cautioned. "Stay low. I'd rather hear toes scraping the rocks than see heads sticking way up in the sky. We fly south until the first belts start showing a low power warning, then we all land and go on from there."
With luck, he thought, they might cover half of the remaining distance to the new Schlinal line before low-power lights started to come on. If they got within four kilometers, they could cover the rest of the distance on the ground in little more than a half hour, if they pushed themselves. And reccers knew how to push themselves.
That still wouldn't leave much time. By then there could be Heggie shuttles and new Boems on their way down from the Schlinal fleet.
"Push it," Dem said as he switched on his own belt.
Manipulating a Corey antigravity belt for horizontal travel required the use of both hands and considerable coordination. The gyro stabilizers fought it all of the way. They were only designed to permit a 5-degree deviation from vertical. The men had to hold the drive units and twist them so that they thought "up" was at an angle in front of them, and then manipulate the power settings almost constantly to keep from rising too high above the ground. A third hand would have made the operation considerably easier. There was certainly no way to keep a weapon at the ready during the process. Rifles were slung, with the slings clipped to one of the straps on each man's pack harness so that it wouldn't be lost in transit. Remarkably, Fredo Gariston, with only one usable hand, still managed to keep his place with the patrol. Even Dem Nimz had trouble believing that.
Dem had been sweating before—it seemed to him that he had been sweating continuously since landing on Tamkailo, hundreds of liters of the stuff—but there was a new outpouring now as he worried at his controls. Right now, Dem and his reccers needed luck more than anything else. If their course chanced to take them right over a concentration of Heggies, they would have little opportunity to defend themselves. Before they could land and get their weapons into play, they might lose half of their already seriously depleted force.
The need constantly to adjust speed and angle took deep concentration. It kept the reccers from building up any great speed. It also seriously compromised the distance they would be able to travel before running out of power for the miniature AG drives. Before his men had traveled a single kilometer on belts, Dem was worrying that he had seriously overestimated how far they might get before batteries started to get dangerously low.
At least they wouldn't be high enough for a fall to do much damage. "Push till we start running dry," Dem told his men. That might give them an extra hundred meters over stopping when the first low-power indicator came on.
Dem kept glancing at his power gauge, glaring at it as if he thought he could make it hold power a little longer by force of will. Whenever his feet brushed a slightly higher piece of ground, he would push off of it or take a couple of running steps. Although Dem didn't waste time thinking about it, he would have assumed that most of his men would likewise be doing everything they could think of to extend the distance they could travel on the belts, even for a few extra meters. It took a certain kind of soldier to v
olunteer for recon duty, and reccer training took care of the rest.
When one of the reccers announced that his low-power indicator had come on, Dem figured that they had already moved to within three-and-a-half kilometers of the main enemy line—closer than he had hoped. "Give a shout when you run dry," he told the man. "We're doin' good. Let's do better. I figure this is our last time on belts here." One way or another.
Still, there wasn't much time left in the air for the reccers. Within twenty seconds, every low-power indicator was on, and ten seconds after that, belts started running dry.
"Ground and form up," Dem ordered. He glanced at the time line on his visor. It would be four hours before the belts would have a full charge again, if they did need them again. Four hours. We should live so long, Dem thought.
Although the two groups of reccers were spread out over rather large areas after their "flight" south, it took no more than a minute for them to form up again. Once the groups started to coalesce, the men communicated with hand signs, the way reccers preferred. Having split the team in half before, Dem and Fredo now split each of those groups in half. Finally, Dem got on the radio just long enough to give rather broad instructions. Reccers didn't need a detailed blueprint. Even if a man got separated from the rest of his team, he would continue to fight on alone until he could get back to the others—or until he could no longer fight or move.
"We get as close as possible and raise as much hell as possible," Dem said. "Remember, our guys are on the other side of the Heggies, so don't get too rambunctious with the RPGs and rockets. They make their breakthrough, we'll tag along with them, back to the rest of the 13th."
The patrols moved forward, and farther apart from one another. The sounds of battle were clearly audible now. The reccers were less than three kilometers from the front line.
Dem moved his patrol more to the west. The farther apart his reccers were, the more confusion they ought to be able to sow among the enemy once they made their presence known. The Heggies wouldn't be certain just how many Freebies had come up behind them—and they would have to worry that the entire 13th had moved south. That was exactly what Colonel Stossen wanted them to think.
We'll sure find out what these guys are made of, Dem thought with a grim smile. He was walking point on his patrol. That was no place for a squad leader, let alone the 13th's ranking reccer, but it was where Dem wanted to be. He trusted his own senses and talents more than he trusted anyone else's, especially at a time like this.
The patrol had gone just over a kilometer on foot when Dem spotted a Heggie machine gun emplacement. The gun did not start firing, which meant—almost certainly—that the reccers hadn't been spotted.
"Down!" he whispered over the channel his patrol was on. He waved up the two men nearest to him and showed them the enemy position. He pulled out a grenade and indicated that the other two should do the same.
"Together," he whispered when all three of them were up on their knees in position to hurl the grenades. The others aped his movements exactly, pulling the pins from their grenades, then throwing them and dropping forward onto the ground. The Heggie post was less than forty meters away. Shrapnel could reach that far and do damage.
The grenades exploded together. "At 'em," Dem said over his patrol's channel. The reccers got to their feet, rifles blasting before they could know whether or not any of the Heggies had survived the grenades.
Two men were still moving, wounded but alive, in the trench that had held the machine gun. One of the reccers ended the movement with a very short burst of wire.
Dem looked around quickly, wondering how close together the Heggie positions were on this side of the line. There was no fire coming in at them. After a moment, he climbed out of the trench on the south side.
"Let's go," he said. He hadn't given a second thought to the way that the Heggie wounded had been killed. After all, the Heggies never took prisoners. And the reccers were in no position to take prisoners now, especially not wounded ones.
Ten minutes later the reccers could see the main Heggie line, six hundred meters in front of them. Dem took a moment to confer with the leaders of the other three patrols.
"We'll all hit them at the same time," he said. "Let's try to cut the distance at least in half. Give 'em a volley of rockets then and move forward until we're close enough for RPGs and the sniper rifles." His own test rifle would score effectively from three hundred meters. The Dupuy cough guns could reach a lot farther. "Another quick burst from there and then we'll try to get close enough for zippers."
If necessary. Dem hoped that before they could get that far the 5th and 8th would be on the move again, coming through—over—the Heggie line. That way a few of the reccers might actually survive the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Orion had finally launched its Bats. The hangars were spaced around the hull at 120-degree intervals. Indigo Flight emerged from the "bottom" of Orion, facing Tamkailo. It wasn't until the Indigo Bats were clear of their own ship that they could see the Schlinal ships—now almost as close as they were likely to get to the Accord fleet, little more than ninety kilometers away. Two of the Schlinal ships had clearly fallen out of formation. One was broken in half, an extremely rare degree of damage. The other did not show any obvious major wounds, but it was obviously out of action.
Faro Malmeed did not concern himself with the possible fate of the—perhaps—fifteen hundred or two thousand Heggies who might have been on those ships. Even on the vessel that had broken in half there might still be considerable numbers of survivors in gastight compartments that had not been compromised. And if there weren't... Faro still wouldn't worry about them, even though he had not heard yet that his brother had been killed in action. The Heggies were, after all, the Enemy.
"We're going buggy hunting," Osa Ximba told his flight. "And any fighters they send along to protect them. Landers are our first priority."
In Indigo three, Faro nodded. It made obvious sense to go after the largest number of them, the enemy, that you could.
"They haven't launched yet," Osa continued, "but they're going to have to start within the next few minutes if they're going for a landing anywhere near Site Charley." If they were going for a direct landing anyway, without letting the shuttles ride through a complete orbit on the way down, and that was unlikely. It would leave the shuttles vulnerable for far too long.
Ximba gave his pilots their vector and acceleration orders. The initial speed and course were neutral, allowing a variety of responses, depending on what the Heggies did in the next few minutes. Minimal power usage. If the Bats had to go low in pursuit of the shuttles, they would need every bit of juice they could save in order to boost back to a rendezvous orbit for Orion... or one of the other ships in the fleet.
Faro looked around his Bat. There were no nearby threats, nothing on his heads-up display or monitors. His look outside was only partly to confirm that there were no Heggies or incoming rockets anywhere in his vicinity. The Bat's "eyes" were far more reliable than his own. Bats were flown on instrument, almost never by anything so primitive as a pilot looking out and making judgments based on what he saw. Mostly, he was just trying to see what kind of damage had been done so far in the battle. He had noticed the two Heggie ships that were out of action. As his Bat moved farther away from Orion, he could see some of the other ships in the Accord fleet.
The Accord ships were in three columns with the center column, the one that Orion led, sticking out in front of the other two. The three columns were "stacked" above Tamkailo, each farther out than the one "below" it. The two fleets were close enough now that the angle between their courses was finally apparent to the naked eye.
At first, Faro could see only the nearest few Accord ships. Those were between him and the rear ends of the columns. Indigo had been out for nearly five minutes before he could finally see the last ships in the two outer columns. One of those, the ship at the tail of the "highest" column, seemed to be dropping behind, falling
out of station. The fleet, even that last ship, was still accelerating, but the one ship was not, apparently, accelerating as rapidly as the rest.
"Shuttle launches from nine ships," Ximba announced. Faro checked his navigating monitor. The Heggie fleet was shown on that. The two crippled ships had not launched any shuttles. The third ship that was not spitting out landers was the second one from the front of the formation. The shuttles came out, spent no more than two minutes moving into their own formations, and then started away from the ships, heading for the ground. They were running "hot," accelerating toward Tamkailo—a standard assault descent.
It only took another five seconds before the computers gave Indigo Flight their intercept instructions. Around them, the rest of Orion's Bats, and the Bats from Capricorn, swivelled onto their intercept course and pushed throttles forward, boosting toward an empty point in space—a point that the Schlinal shuttles should reach a fraction of a second ahead of the Bats.
Both groups would need approximately twelve minutes to reach that point. For at least half of that time, the Bat pilots would have virtually nothing to do. They wouldn't be able to strike at the Heggies, and there were no Heggies in position where they would be able to strike at the Bats.
There were a lot of other blips around both fleets: the cordons of fighters on attack and defense, electronic decoys, and mines that could be controlled remotely and detonated if an enemy vessel came close enough for the blast to do damage. But Indigo Flight could ignore all of those other fighters with impunity unless they showed significant changes in course and speed. It was only the Boems accompanying the shuttles that might be a major threat to Indigo.
"Any word on escort for those shuttles yet?" Faro asked.
"Just that there are at least some Boems with them," Osa replied. "CIC hasn't got them all sorted out yet. There are at least sixty-eight small blips out there. Figure that at least half of them are fighters, maybe two-thirds."
