“Nothing, sir,” Sergeant Hove concluded.
“Call it in,” Ryan ordered. “And tell HQ that they’re going to need more men to sweep for the lost boys.”
He took one last look at the odd little family, then turned and headed back to the track, his men falling in behind him. If they were lucky, they’d stumble across something before getting roped into a long search that would take them away from their mission. Or, perhaps, the four men would be abandoned by their superiors. Losing them would hurt, but the mission was more important.
“Those boys are going to be trouble,” Sergeant Hove predicted. “Their pride was hurt when we trampled through their home.”
Ryan shrugged. There was no shortage of idiots on Thule willing to get themselves killed, in the hope they would take a Wolf with them. He doubted the young men behind them had the training or equipment to be really dangerous, although it was possible he was wrong. A single sniper with a hunting rifle could do a great deal of damage, if he hit the right person.
“If we see them fighting, we kill them,” he said. There was already a detention camp on the far side of the FOB, but rounding up civilians at random would probably be counter-productive. “Until then, we ignore them.”
***
“They found nothing,” Mark said.
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Ferguson said. “The sweep of the forest turned up nothing, beyond a handful of hermits and a couple of tiny homesteads.”
Mark cursed under his breath. He understood losing soldiers in combat, but missing soldiers was far worse. There would always be uncertainty over their fate. It had been nine hours since their absence had been noted, more than long enough for their kidnappers - if they had been kidnapped - to bundle them out of the danger zone and go to ground. Or, if they had merely been killed, there was plenty of space to hide the bodies. He no longer found it possible to believe that they’d merely gotten lost.
He scowled. “Captain Voss, the man who should have kept them in line?”
Ferguson looked up. “Yes, sir?”
“Demote him,” Mark said, firmly. It was a harsh punishment, but he saw no choice. Voss was, at best, a third-rate officer. He might improve, given time and experience, yet there was no time. “And have the remainder of the platoon reassigned to CROW-duty.”
He allowed his scowl to deepen as he studied the map. Four soldiers, missing somewhere within a largely-impassable forest. Killed, kidnapped ... or had they deserted? It wasn’t impossible, although they’d have to be complete idiots to realise they wouldn't be able to hide indefinitely. He made a mental note to have their platoon mates interrogated, then dismissed the matter. There was no more time to waste.
“Have one company remain on search duty, but redirect the others to the advance guard,” he ordered. More and more soldiers were being landed, every day; the FOB was rapidly expanding as the engineers reconstructed buildings and sited defences. “We don’t want to give the enemy a chance to react.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferguson said.
Mark dismissed him with a nod, then turned back to the map. The small town of Cheshire was largely intact, but that would change quickly if the enemy put up a fight. Orbital observation suggested that the enemy had evacuated much of the town, yet there were enough people left to convince him that they were planning something. He would have preferred to flatten the town from orbit, but he needed the road and rail network largely intact.
As if the enemy were planning to leave it intact, he thought, coldly. They’ll do what they can to mess it up before it’s too late.
He pushed the thought aside as he started to issue additional orders. Maybe he couldn’t flatten the town, but he could make damned sure the enemy had no time to slip reinforcements into the settlement or turn it into a base of operations long before he stormed through the gates. Once his forces were blocking all the roads, the locals would be trapped and isolated.
And if they refuse to surrender, he told himself firmly, we will take the city by storm.
***
Jasmine read the message with a strange mix of emotions. On one hand, Colonel Stalker hadn't reprimanded her for killing the enemy soldiers, even though she risked revealing their presence and destabilising the entire plan. But, on the other hand, there was an unspoken yet unmistakable warning in his words. Her decision could have had far-reaching consequences, even though it didn’t seem to have changed anything ...
“We’re to advance to the nearest vantage point to Cheshire,” she said, once she reached the end of the message. “And then we’re to deploy the MANPADs.”
“At last,” Buckley said. “I was getting bored here.”
Jasmine nodded. It had been a day since they’d killed the would-be rapists, a day in which they’d lurked in the hide, catching up with their sleep while waiting to see if the Wolves would direct their forces in their direction. She'd had the entire platoon packed up, ready to move on a moment’s notice, but it seemed to have been unnecessary. SIGINT suggested that the Wolves had been delayed, searching for their missing comrades. She hoped, silently, that they hadn't stumbled across the bodies.
They’d kill the Forsakers, if they found the bodies, she thought, grimly. I hope they had the sense to run.
She pushed the thought out of her mind as she closed the terminal and buckled it to her belt, then joined the others outside the hide. The sound of shuttlecraft was, if anything, growing louder. Buckley had spent two hours tracking them with his handheld sensor, finally concluding that the Wolves were stacking up the shuttles to keep the landings under some kind of schedule rather than setting up new LZs. It made a certain kind of sense, Jasmine had to admit, but it also suggested a certain degree of overconfidence. They had to be fairly sure they weren't going to run into someone with a MANPAD.
“Cheshire is ten kilometres to the west,” she said, once she’d run through the content of the message. There was no point in trying to keep it to herself. Someone might well get killed on the mission - and that someone might be her. Leaving her subordinates in ignorance would ensure the mission failed with her. “We’ll head for Hill #352 and set up an OP there.”
“That’s quite close to the town,” Stewart pointed out. “They’ll sweep for trouble there, surely.”
“It is on the other side of the river,” Jalil countered. “They may not put it at the top of their list.”
“That’s not a treacherous river,” Stewart reminded him. “You don’t need an armoured combat suit to cross it.”
“We’ll check carefully before we reach the summit,” Jasmine said. They’d had one close call and she didn't really want another, even though it wouldn't be long before they’d be ordered to hit the enemy as hard as they could. A running battle midway up a hillside could go either way. “And if the Wolves are present in force, we’ll pull back and find somewhere else.”
She glanced at them, then led the way through the forest. It wasn't a long march, compared to some of the routine marches she’d done on the Slaughterhouse, but it was real. Showing themselves, even for a brief second, could be disastrous. She felt an itching between her shoulder blades as she contemplated unfeeling automated eyes, staring down from the high orbitals. It was unlikely that anyone, even Admiral Singh, would waste a KEW on a handful of insurgents, but the chance to pick off seven marines was not one to be dismissed. And if Admiral Singh knew who was leading them ...
The thought made her smile. She didn't know - couldn't know - if Admiral Singh had drawn a connection between Jasmine Yamane and the person who’d fomented a revolution on Corinthian, forcing her to flee in disarray. It was quite possible, she had to admit; her name was well-known on Corinthian, despite strong suggestions that it would be better to keep the details as concealed as possible. And yet, she’d given her real name when she'd been captured on Thule and she’d just been shipped to Meridian, rather than isolated and executed at Admiral Singh’s whim. It was possible that there was another Jasmine Yamane in the files - there had been millions of men and women in milita
ry uniform before the Empire collapsed into ruins - but equally possible that Admiral Singh hadn't realised who she’d captured.
Because she’s a vindictive bitch, Jasmine thought. She'd read the files, after Corinthian had been liberated. Admiral Singh had slaughtered her former enemies with an unholy glee, even though she hadn’t embarked on random purges. If she knew who I was, she would want me dead.
She pushed the thought aside as she heard something moving in the undergrowth, lifting her rifle before she saw the fox springing from cover and bounding into the distance. There were people who hunted the creatures, she recalled from her briefing; farmers viewed them as pests and rich idiots enjoyed the idea of chasing the animals over hill and dale. Jasmine saw why farmers didn't like foxes, but she took no pleasure in hunting dumb animals, even ones that could be dangerous. Hunting humans was far more challenging - and they had a tendency to fight back.
The sun was high in the sky when they reached the lower base of Hill #352. They circled it slowly, watching for signs of an enemy presence, then climbed up the rear of the hill until they found a point that overlooked Cheshire. The Wolves had already arrived, in force; Jasmine didn't need anything more than the naked eye to pick out a dozen AFVs and five Landsharks lurking on the approach roads, their guns dominating the scene. A handful of prisoners were sitting on the ground by one of the tanks, their hands bound behind their backs. She briefly considered another rescue, but it would be suicide. There was a small army within view.
And more on the way, she thought, as yet another shuttle entered the planet’s atmosphere and headed towards the enemy FOB. The town’s defenders were badly outnumbered. They would be wise to surrender, if they thought they might survive the experience.
Her expression darkened as she silently surveyed the scene. Two helicopters were clattering through the sky, keeping a wary distance from the town; this time, at least, the pilots seemed much more aware of potential danger. They were ducking and weaving at random, trying hard to throw off any targeting sensors that might be aimed in their direction. It looked very much as though the Wolves were moving deliberately, rather than making a quick thrust into the town. She had a feeling that their commander had been trained by the Imperial Army; his tactics were slow and ponderous, rather than the quicksilver blows she'd been taught at the Slaughterhouse. But she had to admit they were effective.
“We appear to be alone up here,” she said. “Do you concur?”
“Yep,” Buckley said. “They’re not interested in the hill.”
Jasmine shrugged, then took a passive sensor from her carryall and turned it on, checking for active sensor emissions. Not entirely to her surprise, there were three drones orbiting over the town as well as the helicopters, while the shuttles were using active sensors of their own to make sure they didn't accidentally crash into another shuttle. Mid-air collisions were rare - at least off Earth, where there had often been at least one a week - but there were so many shuttles flying through the atmosphere that it was a very real possibility ...
She returned the sensor to its place, then removed the HVM launcher from the bag and snapped it together. Beside her, the other marines readied their own weapons, checking and rechecking to make sure they were ready to take out their targets. The drones were probably basic surveillance models, but they might well be armed. There had been a fuss over arming drones in the army, she recalled, yet the Marine Corps hadn't hesitated. Admiral Singh would probably not hesitate either.
And whoever is on command on the ground would definitely see the advantages, she thought, as she lifted the launcher to the sky and hunted for a target. A shuttle had to be targeted, whatever else they hit. The enemy logistics needed to be hampered. And taking down the drones won’t hurt either.
“Ready,” Buckley said.
“Ready,” Stewart echoed.
Jasmine braced herself as the next shuttle came into view. She wondered, idly, what it carried; troops, supplies ... but it didn't matter. All that mattered was giving the wolves a bloody nose.
“Fire,” she ordered.
Chapter Twenty
Lakshmibai provides yet another example. The planetary caste system ensured that the Kshatriyas (warriors) were the only ones considered for military service. (In fact, being born into the Kshatriyas ensured that one would either be expected to serve or bear the next generation of warriors.)
- Professor Leo Caesius. The Role of Randomness In War.
Ryan started as he saw the first HVM shoot up from the hillside, a streak of light that moved so quickly that it had struck its target before he realised quite what had happened. The shuttle seemed to stagger as the missile slammed into its hull, then rolled over and plummeted out of the sky, trailing fire and smoke. Four more missiles followed, two targeting the helicopters while the remaining two headed up into the sky. The shuttle crashed hard, the explosion echoing across the valley.
“They’re on the hillside,” Sergeant Rove snapped. “Sir?”
Ryan didn't hesitate. “Deploy the platoon,” he ordered. The hill was on the wrong side of a river, but they could ford it easily. And if not, the tanks could certainly drive through the water with men perched on their hulls. “Call for reinforcements ...”
He thought fast. “Seal off the hill,” he added, sharply. “Don’t let them get away!”
***
Jasmine dropped the launcher on the ground as soon as the missile was in the air, then turned and led the marines down the rear of the hill. There was no point in trying to keep and recycle the launcher, something that had always annoyed the beancounters; they were no longer any use once the missiles had been fired. Indeed, carrying the damned things would slow the marines down at the worst possible moment. Behind her, a thundering explosion told her that at least one of the missiles had scored a direct hit. She glanced up just in time to see the remains of a helicopter dropping from the sky.
She smirked to herself - that would teach the Wolves not to be overconfident - and then kept moving, sacrificing stealth for speed. The Wolves had probably studied at one of the army’s training facilities - hell, they might even have a graduate of a Marine Corps Boot Camp in command. They’d try to keep the marines from slipping away by surrounding the hill, then searching it inch by inch. Unless, of course, they just called in a KEW strike. There was nothing stopping the Wolves from flattening the hill from orbit.
“We know we got the drones,” Stewart muttered. “They’d have thrown something back at us by now if they hadn't.”
Jasmine shrugged, glancing back to see a plume of smoke rising up on the other side of the hill. She hoped the shuttle hadn't crashed into the town, but there had been no way to be certain where the craft would come down. The shuttle was large enough to crash, rather than be blown to smithereens; the helicopters would have been blown apart in mid-air. Their crews would have died before they knew they were under attack.
She felt a stab of guilt, which she pushed aside savagely. The troops on the shuttle, assuming there had been troops on the shuttle, would have been dangerous, if they’d ever been allowed to land. Part of her thought that shooting at defenceless men was dishonourable, but those men hadn't been POWs or innocent civilians. Killing them while they were on the shuttle was safer and simpler than killing them on the ground. She couldn't allow herself to feel any regard for their lives as long as they were opposing her.
A clattering sound echoed in the distance; she glanced north to see a pair of helicopters heading towards the hill, bobbing backwards and forwards as they tried to evade any potential missile locks. There were none, she knew; there was no one left on the hillside, unless the enemy troops had already reached the bottom. She kept a wary eye out as they made it into the forest, but there was no sign of trouble. The enemy hadn’t had time - yet - to prevent them from escaping.
“We need to keep moving,” she said. Leaving traps for their enemies was second nature by now, but speed was of the essence. “And hope we make it out of the envelope before it�
�s too late.”
“They’ll call in KEWs,” Stewart predicted. “They’ll never catch us now and they have to know it.”
Jasmine was inclined to agree. The enemy didn't have anything close enough to the hill to intercept them before they made their escape. All that was required was a decision to call in a KEW strike ... who had that authority? The Imperial Army had never been keen on issuing Forward Fire Controllers to individual units, but the Marine Corps had thought differently; hell, she had the training to call in air or orbital strikes. Who knew what the Wolves thought about the matter?
She pushed the thought aside and kept moving, picking up speed as they plunged further into the forest. She’d find out soon enough.
***
Mark sucked in his breath sharply as the first alerts popped up on the display; a shuttle, two helicopters and two drones, blown out of the air by man-portable HVMs. He wasn't surprised that the enemy had finally shown their teeth, now his forces were enveloping Cheshire and readying themselves to push down to the capital, but it was a headache.
“I’m clearing all air traffic out of the area,” an operator called. “All orbiting shuttles are to remain in orbit; I say again, all orbital shuttles are to remain in orbit!”
They Shall Not Pass (The Empire's Corps Book 12) Page 20
