The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  “Keep the Feddies away until the shuttles get down and we have time to unload them,” Spencer had told Tory. “Ten minutes after they’re on the ground should do it. Then you can start pulling your men in and we’ll get you back to your own rifles.”

  So far, so good, Tory thought. After fifteen minutes there had been no hint of enemy activity along either approach. The shuttles were on their way down. Within seconds he expected to hear the sonic boom as they came in hot.

  He had a clear view down an open trail, sixty yards before it bent left. Unless they show up in the next two minutes, we should be home free. Once the shuttles were on the ground, they should be able to hold the enemy off for ten minutes.

  Forty yards away, Alfie Edwards held down the left end of the ambush. His view of the track was not as good as Tory’s, but it would do. The path crossed his field of fire at an angle. He could sweep a twenty-yard stretch of it without much movement at all. Between Alfie and Tory, the rest of first squad waited.

  Patrick Baker was three yards left of Tory. Kepner usually kept Baker close, where he could keep an eye on him. Baker lifted his visor just enough to slide a hand through the gap. He wiped sweat away from his eyes. As soon as he dropped the faceplate back into position, he glanced to his right to see if the platoon sergeant had seen the breach. It didn’t really matter to Baker. The need to get the stinging perspiration away from his eyes had been too great for him to blink and bear it.

  You’re scared half out of your wits, Baker thought. It got worse every day, every time the prospect of fighting got close. After six days on Coventry, Patrick found himselfwondering how much longer it would be before he simply could not function any longer. He squeezed his eyes shut. I don’t want to freeze up and get the other blokes killed. Better if I get it fast, before I can screw up. He opened his eyes and looked out. There was no sign of the enemy. Maybe they won’t come. Maybe we’ll get off easy this time. That hope died almost as soon as it was born. Just as Baker became aware of the noise of the approaching shuttles, he saw movement on the trail, just a hint of motion through the trees, not yet directly in front of the ambush.

  “Let them get close enough so we have them all in our sights,” Tory cautioned on the platoon channel. Then he switched to the noncoms’ channel. “Cordamon, you have any on your side?”

  “Negative,” Will Cordamon replied.

  “Then just stay down. Maybe you’ll catch a break. Alfie, can you see how many there are here?”

  “I’ve counted six so far, but I can’t see how far back the line goes. Could be a squad or a company, for all I can tell.”

  “Hang tight, Alfie.”

  “They come much farther, they’ll see us, and they’ll have time to target those shuttles.”

  “Wait.” Tory glanced upward but could not see the incoming landers. The sound level told him they were close though. Silently, he counted to three, the muzzle of his rifle tracking the Feddie point man. “Fire!”

  The two squads started shooting. The Federation soldiers who were visible all went down. Gunfire came from behind them, though, blind fire, heavy but uncoordinated. It shredded leaves and chopped branches.

  A couple of platoons, at least, Tory thought. He heard the shuttles come in then, passing very close overhead as they dropped into the clearing and out of range of the Feddies.

  “The shuttles are on the ground,” Spencer told Kepner by radio. “Now, give us ten minutes.”

  “We’ll try, but I won’t guarantee that we’ll have a single round of ammo left in half that.” Tory went back to the other channel to tell his men to save ammunition now thatthe shuttles were in. “Wait until you have targets and stick to single shots as much as you can. We just need to keep them from getting close now. Another nine minutes and we can pull back.”

  A few seconds later, Tory had another thought. “Alfie, shut your fire team down. Make them think the ambush is narrower. If they try to flank us, be ready for them.” He gave the fire team on the end of the right wing the same instructions.

  For the next few minutes, Tory contented himself with an occasional glance at the time line on his visor. There was more than enough to engage his full attention out in front. There was a pause in the firing from the Feddies. Tory guessed that the Feddies would be looking for a way around the ambush, or trying to determine exactly where it was so that they could lob in grenades. Once half of the ten minutes had passed, Tory told the fire teams on each end of the V to start pulling back.

  “Try to do it without letting the Feddies know what you’re doing,” he added.

  Alfie’s derisive snort was too soft for Tory to hear. Do it without letting them hear me? I could get close enough to see the color of their eyes without them hearing me. “We’re pulling back, soft and easy,” he told his men. “Not a sound, not a rustle of leaves. Give me thirty seconds to move first.”

  He needed less than thirty seconds to get to a new position five yards back from where he had been. He then waited for his men to make their moves. Alfie and his privates took turns, withdrawing a few yards at a time, covering each other, pulling back until they were back near the apex of the ambush.

  “Okay, Kep, we’re back,” Alfie reported.

  “I see you. Pull around behind me. Another two minutes and we should be heading back in.”

  “No argument from me.”

  That’s a relief, Tory thought. He shifted his position just enough to ease a sudden cramp in his right leg.

  “Okay, Tory, bring them on in,” David whispered over the radio. “We’ve got the goods out.”

  “Are the shuttles going to try to make it back out?”

  “Not just now,” Spencer replied. “It seems we’ve picked up a few extra riflemen.”

  “We’re on our way.” Kepner gave the platoon their orders and started withdrawing his own fire team with the rest. Extra riflemen? That brought the mental equivalent of a snort. Fat lot of good a couple of navy blokes’ll be in a fight.

  By the time that I&R crossed the lines, they were moving at close to a run. There was no pursuit” behind them, but there was also no longer any need for stealth. Once they got in, they found that men from headquarters platoon had already loaded their rifles and arranged spare magazines for them.

  “Now that’s service,” Alfie said as he ran the bolt on his rifle to put a round in the chamber.

  “Just don’t ask the clerks to brew your tea,” Tory advised. “They make it strong enough to dissolve a field skin.”

  “Speaking of tea, is there any chance for a meal?”

  “Field rations and canteen water,” Tory said. “They brought down extra meal packs as well. But don’t take all day about it. Ten minutes and we go into the line. The captain’s afraid the Feddies might try to crash the party again.”

  Ian Shrikes kept his hands on the armrests of his chair on the bridge of HMS Hull. Holding his pose of casual confidence was becoming a chore. It took conscious attention to not demonstrate relief when the ship ducked into the safety of Q-space, or to keep from showing white knuckles caused by gripping the armrests too firmly.

  “I’ll want those casualty reports as quickly as possible, Lieutenant Smythe,” he told the officer of the deck. Hull had taken two hits from one of the Federation battlecruisers after launching its Spacehawks on this last excursion into the hostile space over Coventry. That ship had simply overloaded Hull’s defenses with a spread of missiles and mines that—combined—had contained enough explosives to fragmenta dozen capital ships if they had all hit.

  Lieutenant Ruby Smythe had an open line to the damage control party working the section where the missiles had hit, near the bow. She had been listening to a running report.

  “One rating dead, sir,” Smythe reported. “It appears that there are three wounded, two of them officers. The DCO”—Damage Control Officer—”says that none of the injuries appear life-threatening. Medical help is already on the scene.”

  I don’t care if they’re officers or rati
ngs, Ian thought, tempted to tell Smythe that. They’re people. They’re my people. But he would not criticize an OD over that, not in front of the rest of the bridge watch, who might see it as a sign that he was as nervous as anyone else.

  “What about the damage?” he asked.

  “Power has been lost to three gastight sections in the number one tube. Equipment in two rooms is … gone. That’s the word the DCO used, sir. Backups are all on-line. Ship’s functions have not been interrupted or compromised.”

  Ian nodded. The level of redundancy built into Cardiff-class ships was remarkable. For every critical system there were at least two, and often more, backup systems. The ship could even lose two of its three Nilssen generators without suffering any critical degradation of function.

  “Comm, relay the damage estimate to the flagship as soon as we emerge from Q-space,” Ian said. It was almost time for that, on the far end of the transit from Coventry. “Navigation, what will the light delay be when we emerge?”

  The navigator, on a holographic link from his station a hundred yards from the bridge, had that answer ready. “We’ll need thirty-two seconds before our exit from Coventry catches us up.”

  They would not be able to see anything that had happened over Coventry following their departure for at least thirty-two seconds after they came back out of Q-space.

  • • •

  Admiral Greene stared at the large screen set into the top of his chart table aboard Sheffield. A larger and more sophisticated version of the mapboards that the Marines carried, it gave him the opportunity to view any section of Coventry. By switching to a three-dimensional projection, he could view holographic charts of any section of space. He had been viewing the space around Coventry, a chart showing the last known positions and courses of all of the ships and fighters on both sides. But that view, important as it was, changed too quickly, too drastically, for it to provide much guidance when the light distance was more than a few seconds.

  It all happens too bloody fast these days, he thought. It’s too ruddy bad we ever got away from the slow ballet, taking days between Q-space transits. Even hours would be welcome. This in-and-out-and-back-in is murder. Turns my brain to jelly. He shook his head and sighed. Alone in the outer room of his day cabin, he could afford the luxury of showing his feelings.

  The new tactics had come since the start of the war. Paul Greene had been present at the creation of the new tactical manual, but he had been in uniform for more than thirty years before that, training diligently at the old, more sedate, tactics, honing those with each year’s fleet war games. The new tactics had allowed the fleet to salvage a bad situation, cheat defeat, and score the first real victory of the war for the Combined Space Forces and the Second Commonwealth.

  But the Confederation of Human Worlds had been quick to copy the new tactics, which nullified the advantage in all subsequent encounters. With both sides ducking in and out of Q-space as quickly as their Nilssens could cycle, space combat had become a cat-and-mouse game. The problem was that no one could be certain who was the cat and who was the mouse until it ended. The game continued until one side gave up the arena, or was destroyed.

  A game of chance, if the sides are anywhere near evenly matched, Greene thought, not able to get his mind completely off the subject even while studying the surface map

  with its overlays showing troop positions. Come out in front of an enemy who’s ready for you and, pop, you’re gone.

  He frowned and tried to force himself to concentrate on the problems faced by the Marines on the ground. One battalion was still aboard Victoria, the heavy weapons battalion. There had been no call for the tanks and artillery. Now the admiral considered putting them on the ground without their heavy weapons, as infantrymen, but two problems kept him from issuing the order. The first was that he wasn’t certain where they might do the most good. The second was that, as long as the fleet was playing hide and seek with the Federation ships, it might be impossible to get that battalion to the ground without incurring prohibitive casualty rates. A landing craft was too inviting a target, too soft. Now that the Federation had battlecruisers in the system, there would be fighters to go after shuttles.

  There were Marines at Coventry City, The Dales, and a half dozen other places. Without air superiority, there was little chance of even consolidating the forces that were already on the ground, putting the five battalions back together.

  The only good news is that the Feddies are spread around even more, in at least a dozen different spots. And their fleet has as much trouble trying to do anything for them as we do for ours. Both sides were equally vulnerable. If most of our landers got through with the supplies, we might have a slight advantage, even if the Feddies outnumber us three to one on the ground. The last was a guess, the best estimate that CIC had been able to make.

  “They snookered us for fair,” Greene allowed to himself. “Kept at least half of their assets on the ground hidden, waiting for just the right moment to strike—waited six days without making a move, without giving us a clue.” He shook his head. It had been an incredible show of patience on the part of the Federation commander, and a demonstration of no mean skill by his troops. Greene and all of his advisors had been taken in by the ruse. There had only been enough transports in system for a regiment and a half when they arrived, and those had fled. “We never asked ourselves if there might have been others, already gone.”

  He continued to stare at the map, calling up columns of data on the side for each of the troop concentrations. No magical solutions sprang to mind.

  “I can’t do anything substantial to help the poor sods on the ground without putting the entire battle group at risk. Extreme risk.” Even then his steps might be futile. If the task force, or a significant portion of it, were destroyed, the Federation would have a freer rein, able to reinforce and resupply their troops at will, able to concentrate fighters to provide close air support.

  “I just don’t have the forces to work with,” Greene complained to the empty room. “Until the Fourth Regiment gets here with whatever ships Stasys found to support them, we have to keep playing this damn-fool game.” Admiral Stasys Truscott, chief of naval operations, had not been certain what ships would be available to escort the other Marine regiment.

  “They should have been here already. Or they should be arriving now,” was Greene’s final comment before he switched the view back to the holographic depiction of the system. But there had been nothing so far, not even an MR from the Admiralty telling him when he could expect the reinforcements he had been shouting for.

  Greene touched a key at the side of his chart table. “Captain Hardesty, would you come to my day cabin for a moment?”

  “Right away, sir.” Mort Hardesty had been skipper of Sheffield for nearly three years. “About two minutes to get to you from here.”

  “Don’t break your neck, Mort. I’m setting up a holo conference with the other captains.” He pressed another key to talk to his aide, to get him to make the arrangements for the immediate conference. Then he sat down to wait. It appeared that they would all have a lot of that to do.

  18

  It was dark when Tory Kepner was wakened by a call from Captain McAuliffe. The sudden voice startled Tory. “Yes, sir, I’m here,” he said as soon as he recovered.

  “Get your skates on, lad. I’ve got to send your lot out for a recce. Give you a chance to plant some mischief as well.”

  “We’ve had our bit of sleep, sir. What do you want us to do?” Tory said over a yawn.

  “Spencer’s on his way to you. He’ll give you the details.”

  “Aye, sir. Seems quiet enough.”

  “The longer it stays that way, the better I’ll like it,” McAuliffe said before he clicked off.

  Tory switched to his platoon channel to rouse everyone. It came as no surprise to anyone that they were going to be sent out. The fact that the entire platoon had been told to bed down well before sunset had been warning enough of that.<
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  “Get a quick meal and drink in while you can,” Tory told his men. Then Spencer slipped into the foxhole with him.

  “You’d best get some food down yourself,” David said. “I’ll talk, you listen while you eat.”

  Tory didn’t argue. He pulled out a meal pack and pulled the strip that opened it and heated the contents. David waited until Tory started eating before he gave him the orders.

  “The captain wants you to do a full tour, circle completely around the Feddies. Mark their positions and try to estimate their numbers. Plant a few mines on the approachesto our positions. Make it more costly for them to circle us in.”

  “You mean they haven’t closed in around us yet?” Tory asked after quickly washing down a mouthful of food.

  “Not in any strength. There may be the odd patrol, but nothing major. That’s part of what the captain wants you to check. Once you make your circuit, the captain wants you to move off to the southwest, at least a mile, well out of the way. You’ll be the reserve if things get touchy here in the morning.”

  “Come up behind and kick them in the arse?”

  David smiled. “Just a little forward of that, I’d say, where it will slow them down a bit. Take rations and ammunition for two days. As soon as you locate a spot to go to ground, radio your report back to me or the captain. That’ll give us a fix on your location as well.”

  “What if we run into Feddies on the prowl?”

  “Better if you don’t. But if you can’t avoid them, try to do them quickly. If the Feddies know we’ve got a force roaming around out beyond our lines, it could sour the whole deal.”

  “Will we be the only ones out, or will there be others?”

  “If Alpha or Delta put out patrols, they’ll stay close, just to tidy up their fronts and plant a few mines. The captain wants you lot well back, t’other side of the Feddies.”