Jump Pay

by Rick Shelley

  "Yeah, I know," Mort said. The second squad medic's pouch was being passed along the line toward him.

  Al took a second to look at the man he had been crawling toward, decided that his wound could wait, and diverted toward Joe and Wiz. Al did what he could.

  "We've got to get him back to Doc Eddies, and soon," Al said. "I can't even get him stabilized with that wound."

  "See if there's anybody else who needs to be moved back," Joe said. "I'll line up the able bodies to guide them. On belts again." He switched channels. "Izzy, where's Doc Eddies set up? We've got at least one man that needs him fast to survive."

  "All the way back at the Heggie base," Walker replied. "We're gonna have to mount a convoy. We've all been hit hard. I think half of George Company's either dead or hurt bad enough to need trauma tubes."

  "I've got at least four dead, including one of my two remaining squad leaders. Damn near everybody else has at least minor injuries."

  "You?" Izzy asked.

  "I'm okay. Just got my visor scratched."

  "Hang on a second." When he came back on the link, Walker said, "Captain says we'll pull your platoon to escort the seriously wounded back to the medtechs and surgeons. Maybe 4th platoon as well if you need help. Call me back as soon as you're ready. We're going to gather all our seriously wounded at my position. You have my marker on your visor?"

  Joe checked the overlay on his visor display. "I see you. About sixty meters from me."

  "Captain and I are in a nice deep crater. Looks like three or four shells must have hit all at once. Room here for a full platoon."

  "We'll start as soon as we've got the wounded in shape to travel," Joe promised. "I hope it's not too long."

  The sun was just starting to show its upper rim over the eastern horizon... out over the peaceful ocean.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  At four separate points just south of the captured Schlinal base, there was movement where there should have been none. In gullies and under overhangs, what appeared to be sections of rock slid silently out of position as camouflaged doors opened. The more than fourteen hundred Schlinal troops who had been "trapped" underground had had plenty of time to reorganize. Their leaders had been in constant communication with the other Schlinal units that had been stationed at what the Accord called Site Charley and with the new arrivals.

  Four exits, four columns of Schlinal infantry. Scouts dispatched before sunrise had reported that there were no Freebies around any of the exits. The rest of the troops hurried out into the morning twilight. Each company, each platoon, had its assignment. The ranking Schlinal officer on Tamkailo, one of the new arrivals, had decided that speed of execution was the primary need now. Once the men from under the base were spotted, much of the advantage would be lost.

  Three hundred men were sent north, back into the base. It was clear that aside from the artillery and various maintenance support units, there were virtually no troops protecting the base and its thousands of tonnes of munitions and other supplies. The Schlinal force desperately needed what was in those warehouses.

  The rest of the Schlinal troops made their way south in their separate columns to attack the Freebies from behind. They would attempt to drive a wedge into the lines constraining both of their concentrations along the sides of the peninsula, attacking at the same time that the smaller detachment started to destroy the Accord artillery.

  —|—

  The seriously wounded were guided north, supported by their antigrav belts. Visible bleeding had been stopped. Broken bones had been immobilized as far as possible. Intravenous drips had been started on those who needed that level of maintenance. The twelve men of Joe's platoon who were still able to move on their own guided all of the more seriously wounded men from the company. Each man, including Joe, was responsible for two men moving on their belts. It was certainly easier than carrying the men, but it was still work, pushing mass forward, guiding the "packages" and making certain that they didn't get away.

  Echo's 2nd platoon handled the wounded. Fourth platoon went along as armed escort. It was two kilometers from where the men had been wounded to the warehouse where the 13th's field hospital had been set up, slightly uphill most of the way.

  "Just hang in there, Wiz," Joe Baerclau whispered. He had his helmet visor up so he wouldn't transmit, but he had been talking to the unconscious Mackey almost the entire distance, trying to keep him alive by willpower and words. It was clear even to Joe that Wiz was hanging on by only the most slender of threads.

  "Another five minutes and we'll have you in a tube," Joe continued. The group had stayed close to the shore to this point, on ground that was relatively even. Now it was time to take a 45-degree turn to the left. Dieter Franzo, 4th platoon sergeant, was standing off to the side, marking the turn. He had a fire team with him, their guns covering the flank, looking inland.

  Joe looked toward those men, then back to see how far behind him the column of men with wounded went. When he looked forward again, Dieter was down on his knees and waving frantically.

  "Get those people moving, double time!" Franzo shouted over the company noncoms' channel. "Heggies, hundreds of 'em." He pointed west and south, then switched channels to report the movement to Captain Keye.

  Joe got his platoon moving north at the nearest thing to a run they could manage with each able-bodied man guiding two limp casualties.

  It was impossible to make the turn to the left now. Dieter and his men had gone flat, their guns trained on the Heggies they could see, about 150 meters away, too far for wire. Unless they were spotted, 4th platoon would hold their fire. A fight would endanger the wounded. Even if they weren't hit again, any delay in getting the most seriously hurt men to the medtechs and surgeons might be fatal.

  Joe kept looking back over his shoulder. He didn't even have the small comfort of being able to point a rifle in the direction of the threat. He needed both hands to guide the two wounded men. His rifle was slung over his shoulder.

  "I see at least a full company, headed straight south," Dieter whispered over the noncoms' link.

  "You let the captain know yet?" Joe had to drag in a deep lungful of air. He was pressing too hard to talk and move at the same time with any comfort.

  "I told him. Must be the Heggies we sealed up in the tunnels."

  "Yeah," Joe said after a short hesitation. His thoughts hadn't yet traveled to the question of where these Heggies might have come from. "They did have bolt holes we didn't find."

  "Didn't look too hard," Dieter said. "We just forgot about them."

  Just after that, 2nd platoon moved behind a ridge that was high enough to hide them from the Heggies who were moving in the other direction. Dieter and his men moved down as well.

  Now we're safe, Joe thought. The sudden feeling of relief was so great that he almost tripped over his own feet.

  —|—

  Dem Nimz would have liked to check every one of the welded doors himself, personally. They bothered him. The Heggies could have blown them by now, he thought. One door or all of them. It wouldn't take much in the way of explosives to knock down one of these doors. Bust out firing. Basic drill.

  These Heggies haven't just lain down and played dead, he reminded himself. Maybe some of the Heggies at the other two bases had, but these guys had fought, even when they were retreating into the tunnels. They didn't mutiny. They didn't surrender. They retreated, but they kept fighting.

  The 13th's recon detachment was still operating as four squads. Dem had taken his squad through three of the warehouses. He had inspected the welds on doors leading into the tunnel system. He had prowled around looking for additional entrances, concealed hatches perhaps, without finding any. He had even rigged up listening gear to try to hear any activity behind the welded doors. That too had yielded nothing, no sounds of people at all.

  "They sure as hell haven't all asphyxiated themselves," he mumbled after listening at the second of the doors. "Even if the tunnel system was sealed with no oxy
gen getting in, they haven't been down there long enough for that." That was, of course, a wild guess. He had no idea how many people had gone down into the tunnels or how extensive the system might be. After checking one more warehouse, he was ready to give up on the welded doors.

  "Let's get back out on the streets," he said.

  The lanes between the buildings were far from empty. There were Havocs parked just about anywhere that gave them an opening for their fire missions. The support vans for Havocs and Wasps were parked wherever they could find room, mostly in the northern half of the base. The crews had set up sentry positions linked by radio. Nervous mechanics patrolled, peering around corners and into buildings. The support crews weren't used to being left on their own. Generally, they remained in the center of defensive positions, with plenty of mudders to keep the enemy away from them. The first continuous and then intermittent firing of the 205mm howitzers reminded everyone that there was still fighting going on, no matter how peaceful it seemed within the base.

  Despite his habitual distrust of radio communications, Dem spent a lot of time on the radio, in almost constant contact with the other reccer patrols. And even though he was normally more comfortable operating at night, in the dark, this was one day when Dem was relieved to see the sun moving above the horizon.

  It was Heggies who might be hiding this time, he thought. The light was their enemy as well. Accord night-vision systems might provide nearly 70 percent of full daylight visibility, but he wanted that extra 30 percent.

  Shortly after sunrise, Dem led his patrol to the east side of the base. "They're bringing in wounded. We'll meet them and escort them in."

  Then he called to make contact. Joe Baerclau was on the other end.

  "There are Heggies moving south from the base," Joe reported. "Company or more. The colonel's already been alerted."

  "Where, exactly?" Dem asked.

  Joe told him. "They must be the ones we sealed up," he added.

  Dem hurried his patrol out to meet the column of wounded, and hurried the group along to the field hospital.

  Although the hospital had been set up in one of the largest warehouses, it was already crowded. At sunrise, there were more than three hundred patients being treated or waiting for treatment. Most of the medical staff had been working without a break for most of the night, on top of several days of extremely long hours. The surgeons had performed more invasive operations than any of them could recall ever performing in a year. And the medtechs were having difficulty freeing up trauma tubes for new casualties. As soon as one patient was removed—often thirty minutes or more before he should have been—there was another casualty to be slid into place.

  Two medtechs were pulled away from other work to do triage for the casualties that Joe Baerclau and his men brought in. The wounded were marked for surgery or trauma tubes. Tubes and operating tables had to be freed up. Several of the wounded, including Wiz, had to be placed on life-support systems to keep them going until a surgeon could get to them.

  As soon as the wounded had been turned over, Dem took Joe aside.

  "There had to be more than a company of Heggies locked up under here. More likely a couple of battalions."

  "That's what I thought," Joe said. "Maybe 4th platoon just saw the tail end of the column. Not our problem now."

  "Maybe." Nimz frowned.

  "You think some of them might be closer?" Joe asked.

  "I'm sure as hell going to find out. What kind of orders you have?"

  "Just to get the wounded here."

  "Nobody told you to drag ass back to the line afterward?" Dem asked.

  Joe shook his head.

  "Unless you get different orders, I'd suggest you keep your men here, around the hospital, for a while. I'll get my guys back looking outside."

  Joe nodded slowly. "Sounds good to me. I'll talk to Dieter. Between the two of us we don't have one good platoon, but we'll do what we can." He would talk to Dieter and to Captain Keye. Joe had been a soldier too long to take it on himself to originate new orders, even at the suggestion of a reccer.

  —|—

  Basset Battery was on the move. "We've got to find a lane that gives us a good shot right down the center of the peninsula," Eustace had told the crew of the Fat Turtle. "New targets."

  Captain Ritchie was in front of the Fat Turtle in Basset one. The rest of the battery trailed behind. Basset one turned a corner, left, aiming south again. The tail end of the howitzer had not quite disappeared from Eustace's view when it exploded, hit by at least one rocket from in front. Basset one stood on its tail and fell backward.

  Eustace's first, fleeting, thought was Cripes, that's the fourth Havoc the captain's had shot out from under him. He was already shouting, "Stop! Trouble!" before his thoughts progressed to It doesn't look like he'll make it out this time. Basset one came to rest upside down. The turret was partially separated from the carriage, and it had been crushed, partly by the rocket blast and partly from having the rest of the Havoc sitting on top of it. Smoke was finding its way out from around the base of the turret, and through the bottom of the carriage.

  "Basset one's been hit," Eustace reported over the battery channel. "Back off. There must be Heggies around the corner."

  Simon was already turning the Fat Turtle enough to back out of line and off to the side. He didn't bother wasting time turning the gun around. The Havoc could travel as rapidly in reverse as it could forward.

  "Why not bring the gun barrel down?" Simon asked. "We've got HE loaded. Anybody comes around that corner, we can give 'em a surprise."

  "Why not?" Eustace said. "Karl, do it." The Havoc was definitely not designed for close-range, point-blank antipersonnel operations, but it didn't have anything else to use in defense.

  The gun barrel came down as far as it would go, about 2 degrees above horizontal. A shell would have to be detonated in the air to do any good at close range. Even 50 meters away, it would be over the heads of infantrymen.

  Eustace got busy on the radio with Major Norwich, the squadron commander. "We need some mudders here!" Ponks shouted when the major came on the line. "We've lost Basset one. There must be Heggies on the loose right inside this base."

  "We can't get anyone to you now," Norwich replied. "You'll have to rely on the mudders already there."

  "What mudders?" Eustace asked.

  There was a long pause before Norwich said, "Our reccers and a platoon or two from several line companies. They were transporting wounded back to the field hospital. And the support crews. That's all there is until we sort the rest of this mess out."

  "We're on our own," Eustace told his crew after switching away from the link of Major Norwich. "Us and whatever odds and ends happen to be around."

  —|—

  Basset one had been blown up right next to the field hospital. The explosion had echoed through the building and shook dust off of the ceiling and walls.

  Joe Baerclau and Dieter Franzo had been talking, close to one of the hospital's two exits. Their men were gathered around them, right along the wall, trying to stay out of the way of the medical teams. That wasn't easy. Three times already surgeons or medtechs had yelled for them to get out from underfoot. The men with minor injuries had already been treated. Al Bergon had taken care of them after the more serious casualties had been handed over to the experts. Anyone who could still walk and use his hands was marked for duty.

  The building shook. Dust fell. Baerclau and Franzo looked at the door next to them, then up at the ceiling, then at each other again.

  Joe was the first to break for the door. "Second platoon!" shouted over his radio. At the same time, Dieter was collecting his men.

  "How you want to work this?" Dieter asked. Joe was considerably senior to him as a platoon sergeant.

  "We'll go left, you go right. When we see what's out there, we'll figure out what to do next. Some of those Heggies must have come back."

  "Maybe a Nova shooting at our Havocs?" Dieter suggested.

/>   Joe shook his head. "That was a rocket, not a tank round." He wasn't certain how he knew that—he had never particularly noticed a difference in those two types of blast—but he didn't have any doubt.

  "Whenever you're ready," Dieter said.

  "Mort, be careful," Joe said as Jaiffer moved into position to be first out of the door.

  "That's why I go first," Mort said with a cold smile. "Get out before they know what's coming."

  Joe checked his rifle, then pulled open the door. Mort jumped forward like a runner coming out of the blocks on a track. He didn't stop at the outer side of the thick stone wall but kept running, out into the lane. The stricken Havoc was only a few meters away. Mort dove for cover behind it. By that time, the rest of the men in the two platoons were also moving into position.

  A squad of Heggies was coming down the lane, hugging the wall of the building across from the hospital. Joe stopped at the outer edge of the entryway and started shooting, getting his zipper into action as quickly as Mort did in the middle of the street. The rest of 2nd and 4th platoons were not much behind getting into action. Some of the men were shooting before they truly saw the enemy. They simply started firing as soon as they saw someone else shooting, aiming in the same general direction.

  The Heggie patrol was slow to react—slow by no more than a fraction of a second—but that was all of the edge that the 13th's men needed. And there was very little cover for the Heggies. They might as easily have been standing against a wall for execution by firing squad.

  The result was about the same.

  Altogether, this firefight lasted less than twenty seconds. A dozen Heggies were down, dead or wounded. Joe moved away from the edge of the doorway, advancing slowly toward the Heggies, his zipper pointed at the men on the ground. He had gone only four steps when another group of Heggies started shooting from the next intersection, forty meters away.

  Joe dropped to the ground as quickly as if someone had knocked his legs out from under him. A fraction of a second's warning had been enough. The first burst of enemy wire went over his head. Twenty Armanoc zippers answered immediately. Second platoon continued shooting. Dieter moved his men forward along both sides of the lane.