Backshot

by David Sherman

  “Squad leaders, report!” Tevedes ordered on the squad leaders circuit when neither of the section leaders called in.

  “First squad, one KIA,” Daly replied on the same circuit.

  “Sergeant Bingh’s down!” a shaky voice said. “The rest of second squad’s pinned down.”

  Sergeant Kare reported, “Third squad’s all right.”

  Fourth squad didn’t reply.

  Gunny Lytle reported for fifth squad, “Fifth squad’s got one KIA, one wounded. We can’t move.”

  Sixth, seventh, and eighth squads also had casualties; only eighth squad was pinned down, the other two were able to move.

  Tevedes resisted the urge to swear; he didn’t have the time to waste. He needed to turn the fight around.

  “Third squad, have you placed your charges?” he asked.

  “Not yet. We can’t get to the admin building, but we’re only a few meters from Lab Two,” Kare answered.

  “Can you get into Lab Two?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Get in there and set your charges.”

  “Aye aye.”

  “Second squad, who’s in charge there?”

  “Wehrli, sir. I think.” The squad’s most junior man. Tevedes forced himself to speak calmly. “Lance Corporal, can you see any of the towers without getting shot?”

  “I-I think so.”

  “Is anybody else in your squad able to fire?”

  “I’m n-not sure.”

  “Well, find out. If there are at least two of you, I want you to put enough fire on one of the towers to take out its gun crew. Can you do that?”

  “Yessir, I can.” Wehrli sounded more confident now that somebody was giving him clear orders.

  “Then do it, Marine.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Fourth squad, can anybody in fourth squad hear me?” Tevedes asked on the all-hands circuit. No response.

  Back to the squad leaders’ circuit. “Fifth, sixth, and seventh squads. By squads, concentrated fire on towers, take those guns out.” Gunny Lytle and the squad leaders replied, “Will do.”

  “Eighth squad, can you see a tower without exposing yourselves too much?”

  “Negative,” Sergeant Pudharee said. “We can’t move, at least two guns are concentrating on us.”

  “Stand fast, Eight.”

  “One more down,” Daly said. While Tevedes was giving orders to the rest of the platoon, he and his remaining men had concentrated their fire on the next tower down the line and silenced it. Tevedes cautiously looked around the corner of the bunker and saw two bodies and the assault gun dangling from it.

  “Got one!” Wehrli shouted into the all-hands circuit.

  “Got ours,” Sergeant Bajing reported. “Moving to another.” Fifth squad had killed a tower and was moving into position to take out another.

  “That makes five for fifth squad,” Gunny Lytle said. The near-deafening racket of assault guns firing into the compound continued, but seemed less than it had been.

  “Where’s the gun that hit Wazzen?” Tevedes asked Daly.

  “Right . . . there,” Daly said, sending a plasma bolt downrange. The bit of star-stuff plunged into a distant bunker’s entrance, and the gun momentarily stopped firing. When it resumed, its fire was wild. Daly rapid-fired several more bolts, joined by Kindy and Nomonon. Several bolts hit around the bunker entrance, but more went true, and in a moment the gun fell silent. Sergeant Kare suddenly broke in. “Third squad’s charges are set and the squad is clear of the building.”

  “All squads, stand clear of Labs One and Two,” Tevedes ordered on the all-hands circuit. He made a silent ten-count, then said, “Fire in the hole!” and set off the charges. The roars of the explosions were muffled by the walls of the buildings, which had been constructed to contain explosions. Still, the walls were old enough that they’d weakened over the years; small clouds of dirt and pulverized plascrete puffed up from them, and cracks raced along the walls. A wall of Lab One bulged out and a corner of Lab Two’s roof collapsed. When the roar of the explosions passed, there was a brief silence in the compound as the shocked defenders stopped shooting. Tevedes snapped an order, and the Marines took advantage of the brief respite to move to new positions.

  Command Bunker

  “Resume fire!” Major Principale shrieked into his comm when he saw his soldiers had stopped shooting to watch the explosion of the labs. He could tell by the reduced amount of fire from the attackers that they were being hurt by the massive firepower put out by his troops, but whoever those invisible attackers were, they were very good—they were hurting his defenders even worse than they were being hurt, methodically knocking out the towers and bunkers. Any reduction in defensive fire could turn the battle in favor of the attackers.

  “Watch for their fire!” he shouted. “That will tell you where they are. Kill them! Kill them! ”

  He examined the monitor images carefully; yes, those faint infrared smudges were definitely the attackers; the fire had slackened when he directed his men’s fire, and the dots moved during the lull in the fighting. The movement put a small group along the northern perimeter in a position where a squad from the reaction platoon could come up behind them. He began issuing orders. Later, he could wonder about who these invisible men were.

  Marines

  Lieutenant Tevedes analyzed the situation. The initial fire had been totally wild, until the tower guns began firing into the area between the labs. They had to be firing at the source of the blaster bolts; he doubted the defenders had any ultraviolet capability that would allow them to see the Marines’ locator lights. There had to be a command bunker someplace, from which the defense was being directed. He needed to find and destroy that command bunker. The building tentatively identified as the military headquarters building was to his left—that was the most likely place to have the command bunker. First, though:

  “Turn off your here-I-am’s,” he ordered on the all-hands circuit. Just in case the enemy could see them. He holstered his hand-blaster and picked up Wazzen’s blaster and switched to first squad’s circuit.

  “First squad, we’re going to the headquarters building and find the command bunker.”

  “Wait one,” Daly said. He sighted his blaster and put a bolt through the entrance of the bunker to the left of the one that had killed Wazzen. Kindy and Nomonon saw where he fired and added their bolts to his. That bunker went silent. “That one could have taken us out before we got there,” Daly explained.

  “Good thinking,” Tevedes said. “Anyone else shooting at us?”

  Daly snorted. Every body was shooting at them. But no fire was coming close to them now. When Daly didn’t say anything, Tevedes said, “Let’s do it!” He sprinted to the next bunker. The others went with him.

  They pounded the forty meters to the suspected headquarters and lined up left and right of the door.

  “We go in hot,” Tevedes ordered. “Right, left, right, left. Ready? Go! ”

  Daly was next to the door on the right. He reached for the handle and twisted, the door swung open. He crashed his shoulder into it, slamming it against the wall as he charged through and wheeled to his right, pointing his blaster where his eyes pointed. Tevedes came next and wheeled to his left, followed by Nomonon and Kindy.

  They were in what was obviously a military office. No one was in it, but three doors led out of the room.

  “Daly, right door, Kindy, left door, Nomonon, center door,” Tevedes ordered. Daly was at the door on the right before Tevedes finished giving the orders, kicked it open, and dove through it. There was a single room beyond the door, living quarters with a hastily vacated bed. Another door off it was open, showing a lavatory.

  “Clear,” Daly reported, followed almost immediately by Kindy’s “clear.” The door on the left was a multiunit lavatory.

  “Guard quarters,” Nomonon reported from beyond the center door. “There’s a blast-hatch on the far wall.”

  Tevedes briskly str
ode through the middle door into a long room. Double-deck bunks, most showing signs of recent use, lined the walls; evidently the duty watch rested there rather than returning to their barracks. To the right, against the far wall, was the solid-looking metal door that Nomonon had identified as a blast-hatch. The lieutenant reached the door in a few long steps and examined it both visually and manually. His cheeks pulled his mouth wide in a feral grin, the door had been designed to withstand explosions from outside without being knocked in. The door had a handle, but there was no visible locking mechanism. So if it wasn’t barred on the inside, it should simply swing open into the guard quarters. He turned about and signaled first squad to gather close. They touched helmets for secure communications.

  “Turn your here-I-am’s back on,” Tevedes ordered. “That hatch looks like it can just swing open. I’m going to give it a try. If it opens, we go in fast and take out everybody who doesn’t surrender immediately. I go left, Daly right, Nomonon left, Kindy right. Any questions?” No questions. “Let’s do it.”

  Tevedes reached the door in a long step and grasped the handle. The door didn’t budge when he pulled, but there was lateral give in the handle. He twisted it right and left, but it didn’t move far in either direction, neither did the hatch move when he pulled while twisting. He pushed on the handle, and smiled when it moved forward. With the handle in as far as it would go, he gave it a clockwise turn and the thirty-centimeter-thick door swung toward him. He pulled on it hard and squeezed through as soon as it was open far enough. Sergeant Daly followed so closely he almost tripped over Tevedes’s heels, and Corporal Nomonon and Sergeant Kindy briefly got jammed together going through the narrow opening. The blast-hatch didn’t open into the command bunker, but onto a landing at the head of a steep, narrow stairwell. Tevedes didn’t hesitate when he got through the door, but went down the stairs three at a time. A landing at the foot of the stairs connected to another, shorter flight of stairs that went left to another landing. More stairs went down left from that landing. There was another blast-hatch at the bottom of those stairs.

  Tevedes bounded down. The lower hatch had the same handle mechanism. He bent low, gripped the handle, pushed, turned, and pulled. This lower hatch was neither as thick nor as heavy as the one at the top of the stairs and swung open faster. Tevedes dove through to his left, pointing his blaster where he looked.

  Command Bunker

  Private Second Class Handquok turned his attention to a blinking alarm light and his blood ran cold.

  “Sir!” he croaked. He gasped and tried again. “Major Principale, someone’s in the stairwell!”

  Major Principale swore, and scanned the bank of controls in front of him, searching for the switches that would toggle the cameras in the guard quarters and stairwell. Sergeant Oble reached over and unerringly hit the right switches. Three of the monitors in front of Principale flickered as their displays changed from the battle raging outside to the interior of the headquarters. The one showing the guard quarters showed the room was empty—and the blast-hatch at its end open. The view of the upper flight of stairs was likewise empty, but the view of the bottom flight showed a faint smudge of infrared midway down and another at the hatch. On the monitor, the blast-hatch began to open. In one motion, Principale stood, turned to face the blast-hatch, and drew his sidearm. At his side, Oble did the same. They fired through the opening blast-hatch.

  Sergeant Daly almost pushed Lieutenant Tevedes out of his way rushing through the hatch into the command center. At the zing-zing of fléchettes flying over his back, he dove for the floor and pointed his blaster at the source of the fire. He squeezed off three quick bolts before his eyes focused on the shooters. Both of them fell with holes in their chests.

  “Don’t shoot, I surrender!” someone called out from behind a console.

  “Show your hands!” Tevedes ordered through his helmet speaker. A pair of hands timidly poked up from behind the console where the voice was. A second pair came up from behind another console.

  “I see two pair of hands,” Tevedes said. “Is anybody else in here?”

  “J-Just M-Major Principale and S-Sergeant Oble,” the first voice said. “I-I think you killed them.”

  While the platoon commander checked the two bodies, Daly checked his men over the squad circuit. Corporal Nomonon was all right, but not Kindy.

  “I got hit in the leg,” Sergeant Kindy reported. “The bleeding’s under control, but the leg won’t hold weight.”

  “Are the painkillers working?” Daly asked.

  “I’m not using them, except for a local. I want to keep my mind clear.” Kindy paused, then added, “My leg’s numb from mid-thigh down.”

  “Daly,” Tevedes broke into the squad circuit, “you and Nomonon check for hidden people, just in case our prisoners are lying about how many people are here.” He looked around the command center; it had eight stations. Where were the other four soldiers who should be on duty here? He switched to his external speaker and asked the prisoners, who were now standing with their hands clasped on top of their heads.

  “It’s night,” Handquok said, “only Sergeant Oble and I were on duty. Major Principale and Private Braser were upstairs. Nobody else was able to get here from the barracks.”

  “Looks like he’s telling the truth, sir,” Daly reported on the squad circuit. The stations were close to each other, there wasn’t much to the room and it had taken little more than a minute for him and Nomonon to search it.

  “Secure the prisoner on the right,” Tevedes ordered through his speaker. “You,” he said, stepping up to Handquok and grabbing his shoulder, “show me how to communicate with the towers and bunkers.”

  Handquok flinched from Tevedes’s grip, but stammered, “Y-Yessir. O-Over here, s-sir. H-Here, sir,”

  he said, holding out a comm he lifted from Major Principale’s console. “P-Press the button on the side to talk. L-Listen here.” He pointed out the earpiece. “It’s hard wired.”

  The other soldier yelped in fear when invisible hands grabbed him and pulled him from the console he’d hidden behind and dragged him to the small open area in front of the open blast-hatch, where he was flung to the floor and his hands secured behind his back.

  “Just lie there and keep quiet, and you’ll be all right,” the invisible man told him. Private Third Class Braser nodded numbly. Tevedes studied the monitors and displays. “Which ones show the towers and bunkers?” he asked.

  “Th-These, sir.” Handquok pointed to a pair of schematics studded with dots. Many of the dots were blinking, about a third of them were dark.

  “What do the lights mean?”

  “Th-Those are stations we h-have c-communications with, sir. W-We’ve lost the dark ones.”

  “Why are the lights blinking?”

  “Those stations are f-firing, sir.”

  “If they’re steady, then they aren’t firing?”

  “Y-Yessir.”

  Tevedes nodded. He raised the comm to his helmet speaker, and pressed the button on its side without bothering with the earpiece.

  “Attention all stations,” he said. “This is the command bunker. Your commander is dead and the command bunker has been taken. About a third of you have been killed or severely wounded—” he glanced at the time “—in the past ten minutes. Surrender now, or you will all be killed. To show good faith on our part, we will cease fire in one minute.

  “Live or die, the decision is yours.” He put the comm down and switched to the squad circuit. “Daly, you heard how to read the boards?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good. Take charge here, I’m going topside to call a cease-fire for us.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Then through his external speaker, “You, come here.”

  “M-Me?” Handquok squeaked.

  “Yes, you. What’s your name?”

  “Handquok, sir,” he said as he stumbled toward the commanding voice of the invisible man. “P-Private Second Class Handquok.”

  “
Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” Daly ordered when the soldier reached him. He quickly secured the soldier’s hands with ties and told him to sit on the floor. “You too,” he told Braser, and lifted him by the collar of his shirt. “Just be calm and you’ll be all right,” he told them, then walked to where he could more easily see the schematics. Upstairs, in the front office, Tevedes toggled on the all-hands circuit. “Now hear this. We have taken the command bunker. I have communicated with the defenders and told them to surrender. Let’s see if they’re going to cooperate. Cease fire. Acknowledge by squads.”

  The Marines stopped firing and the squads acknowledged the order, beginning with Daly’s terse,

  “One-one, acknowledged.” This time, fourth squad reported as well. Outside, the rattle of the defenders’

  guns diminished sharply.

  “One-one,” Tevedes said, “what do the boards say?”

  “The light for one bunker is still blinking,” Daly reported. “Wait one.” Daly told Nomonon to bring Handquok over. “Where is that bunker?” Daly asked on his external speaker.

  “Th-That’s the f-first one north of the main gate.”

  “Thanks,” Daly said, then over the radio, “Six, the first bunker north of the main gate is the only one still firing.”

  Tevedes tried to imagine where his squads were. “Two-five and two-six, are you in positions to engage the bunker just north of the main gate?” When they reported they could quickly maneuver into position, he said, “Kill it.”

  In a moment he heard the multiple crack-sizzle of half a dozen blasters, then silence.

  “I’m going to order the defenders to leave their weapons and posts and assemble on the drill field,”

  Tevedes said into the all-hands, then hurried back to the command bunker to give the order. The Battle of the Cabbage Patch was over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  On the New Granum Road, Union of Margelan, Atlas

  Toward dusk two small, bedraggled figures, obviously a young woman accompanied by a large dog, stepped out of the corn onto the shoulder of the road in front of the three men. Lanners challenged her sharply. “Halt! Identify yourself!”