The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  “These aren’t like the Feddies we’ve fought before,” David Spencer told Captain McAuliffe as the rest of the company worked its way around the southern end of the Federation troops, trying to complete the encirclement. “The ones we’ve faced before never put up this much of a fight.”

  “We’ve never faced them when they had a fleet upstairs to back them up,” McAuliffe said. “Or when they had shuttles waiting to carry them off.”

  McAuliffe had posted one platoon, mostly mechanics, to cover the road leading to the Federation shuttles. As long as the landers had only a few men to guard them, they were no threat, and as long as the rest of the Feddies couldn’t get to those shuttles, they did not merit further attention.

  H&S Company had the farthest to travel as McAuliffe tried to encircle the Feddies. Delta would bend around behind them. Alpha was working to close off the northern end and link up with the I&R platoon. The elements of both line companies that were not moving worked to keep up the pressure on the Feddies to allow the rest to get to their new positions.

  “They still walked into something they shouldn’t have, sir,” Spencer said. “Why didn’t they just pull the people they already had here back to the shuttles while they couldinstead of sending more men in where they might not be able to get out? They could have done that without risking anything. The one lot was close enough to get to their LZ before we could have stopped them.”

  “Don’t ask me to read minds,” McAuliffe said. “Maybe their intelligence is even worse than ours. Maybe they thought they had the numbers to do the job. Or maybe they just had ludicrous orders: ‘Do the job you were sent to do, no matter the cost.’ “

  For the first time since starting their move around the end, H&S came under fire then, just a scattering of rifle fire, but enough to halt the advance as everyone went to ground.

  “To the left, sir,” Spencer said. “Either we didn’t go far enough west before we turned or we’ve just run into a patrol.”

  “Take a squad and see if you can tell,” McAuliffe said.

  “Aye, sir.” David gritted his teeth for an instant. “First squad, come with me,” he said after switching channels. “Time to see how much good all that training’s done.” The first squad of headquarters platoon consisted of clerks and the captain’s driver. For eighteen months they had complained about their lead sergeant’s attempts to turn them into I&R Marines.

  I wish I did have proper I&R lads for this, David thought as he led the squad off to the left. He glanced around at the men he did have—clerks, red-tape specialists. Even if they had taken most of the combat training courses that the line companies got, they had spent less time rehearsing them. They were still just clerks. They spent more time at complinks than anything else, more time sitting on their backsides than squirming through the dirt.

  The patrol had been moving for five minutes before David realized that he had not seen or heard anything to complain about in the performance of his clerks. They might look awkward trying to sneak through the forest, but they were being careful. They almost looked like proper Marines.

  Maybe, David thought, careful approbation with no accompanying smile. He positioned himself in the middle of the squad. The corporal on point moved more slowly thanan I&R point man might, but under the circumstances that was no criticism. The only alternative would have been for David to take the point himself. In some circumstances, he might have done that, but these lads—the oldest was only twenty-three, most had not seen their twenty-first birthday—needed him in the middle of the formation, where they could all see him, where they were all close enough to take some consolation from his proximity.

  It was poor sound discipline, but David did not stint himself on the occasional comment or suggestion, delivered softly, either to a single individual or to the entire squad, as needed. The patrol had been out for twelve minutes when the point man stopped and sank slowly to the ground, first squatting, then going flat. The rest of the squad went to cover as well.

  “Sarge, I think I’ve got something,” Corporal Jengin Rice whispered.

  “What?”

  Rice hesitated. “I can’t see it now, but there was movement that didn’t look right, maybe camouflage moving the wrong way.”

  “Keep watching. I’ll be up there in a moment.”

  David moved on elbows and knees. Eventually he slid into position next to Rice. “Where?” he asked.

  Rice cautiously raised an arm a little and pointed. “I think it was like a small area of green moving one way while everything else moved more the other way.”

  “How far out?”

  “I don’t know,” Rice said. “At least twenty-five yards. Maybe twice that. I just can’t be sure.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Spencer said. He thought that the distance was probably nearer the larger estimate, because at twenty-five yards there was little chance that an enemy sentry would have missed seeing Rice before he went down. David looked behind him. The next man in line had a grenade launcher. David gestured for him to come forward.

  “Give me the launcher.”

  The private complied as quickly as he could. He had his rifle in his hands, the grenade launcher slung on his back.

  When Spencer finally got the weapon, he checked to make sure that it was loaded. There was a full chain—five grenades—in it, one in the chamber, four in the awkward magazine below.

  David used the squad channel. “Keep your heads down. I’m going to drop three grenades out there, in an arc. Wait for the third one to pop, then give it another four seconds before you get your heads out of the dirt. Then be ready for anything.”

  Three grenades: left, right, center, David decided. He adjusted the sights for fifty yards. That was as close as “The Book” advised dropping the rocket-propelled grenades. The kill radius was thirty yards in open terrain. Even at fifty yards, the shrapnel could do serious damage.

  David lifted up to his knees, slowly, and brought the grenade launcher up the same way. One, two, three. He took in a breath and held it while he launched the three grenades. As soon as the third was out, he dropped forward, going flat on his face. The flames of the grenades’ propellant burned out before they left the barrel, but the grenades made a tearing noise as they ripped through the greenery toward their destinations. The flight was too short for that noise to give an enemy time to recognize the sound and react. But if someone had heard them pop out of the barrel, or seen the flash of the final exhaust of flames, there might be time for a few shots before …

  One, two, three: the grenades went off with little more than a second separating first from last. The sounds blended together, initial explosions and the ripping of wood and leaves as the shrapnel raced away. There was a sharp crack as one large branch broke and a subsequent crashing sequence as it came down through other branches.

  David strained for sounds of gunfire through the echoes of the explosions, but he heard nothing close, nothing that seemed to be directed at his patrol. He lifted his head enough to look.

  “Keep low now, but let’s move on,” he told the squad. “By low, I mean on your knees.”

  Knees and elbows. Spencer patted Rice on the shoulderto tell him to start moving. They needed to get close to where the explosions had been, just in case somebody had an idea where the grenades had come from and decided to retaliate in kind. Change positions just to make it harder for the enemy to target them.

  David dropped back into the third spot in line. “Unless we run into hostiles, keep going until you reach the edge of the blast areas,” he told Rice. “Then pull in and wait for me.”

  The squad scuttled along on elbows and knees, rifles in their hands. In combat, men could move rapidly even in an awkward crawling position. Adrenaline, from fear or anticipation, kicks in. The body finds new limits, and sometimes surpasses even those. Even normally deskbound sorts such as these clerks moved at a lively pace.

  When the patrol reached the edge of the grenades’ major damage, the men spread out ju
st short of it. There were no real craters, but it was easy to see where each grenade had exploded from the way the ground had been stripped bare and the surface layer of dirt and detritus pulverized. Over and around the impact spot, the heaviest damage to trees was found.

  There were also four Federation soldiers to mark the locations. Only one showed any sign of life, and not for long. Multiple wounds in his chest and stomach were oozing blood, and there appeared to be serious internal damage.

  “Captain?” Spencer was on a direct link to McAuliffe. “We’ve scratched four Feddies. Where the RPGs went off. No sign of anyone else close.”

  “Wait for us there. Good work.”

  Allocation of resources. The phrase itself had become overused in the councils Paul Greene held to determine how best to send in the Fourth Regiment. His first, and easiest, decision was that he would not break up individual battalions. The Second Regiment was too fragmented on the ground. As soon as possible, Greene planned to correct that, but in the meantime he would not exacerbate the problem by shipping in the reinforcements the same way. Regimentalheadquarters and the four line battalions would go down at once. The engineers and heavy weapons battalions would be held aboard Charlotte. Now Greene regretted sending the Second’s engineers down in the initial assault. There would be a lot of work for engineers after the fighting was over, starting the people of Coventry on the road to recovery.

  The next decision was where to send each of the Fourth’s line battalions. Where would they do the most good? Where were they most needed? Those questions needed study, and there was no time to do that properly. Concentrate on the three largest cities, Greene decided. Secure those first and you’ve accounted for three quarters of the Feddies on the ground. The Second had battalions in each of those cities, but they had not been able to finish off the enemy forces they faced. The smaller cities and towns, those not already secured or being contested by the Second Regiment, would simply have to wait. In any case, the situation was not out of control anywhere where there were already Marines on the ground. The towns that they had not been able to get to yet … there was simply no help for that.

  Greene’s ships moved into position. The Spacehawks of all four battlecruisers were launched to cover the Fourth’s landers. At the double: they had to try to get everyone on the ground before the Federation fleet returned to contest the landings.

  There were long minutes of deep anxiety for Greene and his subordinate commanders. Every available camera and sensor was looking for the first hint of the Feddie fleet returning. Every possible eye was scanning monitors. And, aboard the shuttles carrying the Fourth, the men knew how precarious their situation might become if Feddie ships and fighters came back to attack them before they could get out of those boxes.

  Remembering to breathe became a chore for Admiral Greene. There was no masking his anxiety now. It was something everyone on the flag bridge of Sheffield shared. Even though they were not in one of those shuttles, exposed to any enemy weapon that came within range, they felt the tension. They knew the risks.

  “Here they come!” The shout, coming after ten minutes of near silence interrupted only by the whispered necessities of duty, was a shock to Greene and many of the others. Two people were pointing at video monitors. The admiral blinked and scanned his own bank, then saw the new blips, hardly identifiable images yet, of Federation ships that had returned to normal space.

  Their spread and courses showed that the Federation commander had anticipated Commonwealth landings. His ships were moving to intercept. Fighters were being launched. Frigates were heading for the lowest approaches they could make without leaving the vacuum of space that was necessary for their survival. The full Federation battle group appeared to have come in for this. All of those ships seemed intent on attacking Commonwealth shuttles. None of them were on vectors that indicated designs against the Commonwealth task force. Even the two dreadnoughts were going in as low as might be safe, trying to bring their weaponry to bear on the shuttles and on the fighters accompanying them.

  If they had returned from Q-space even three minutes sooner, the Federation might have caught the flotilla of landers high enough to do massive damage. It would not have been inconceivable that they might have destroyed more than half of the shuttles, more than half of the troops.

  But those three minutes made a galaxy of difference. Even the last shuttles had gone atmospheric before the Feddie ships started to blink into normal space and launch fighters and missiles. By the time those weapons were launched, the shuttles were too deep in the atmosphere of Coventry for the Feddies to get at more than two or three in the air.

  Once on the ground, it took the Marines only seconds to evacuate each lander and go to ground, away from the easy target. Federation fighter pilots took those easy targets, as many as they could on a single pass. By that time, though, it was almost an empty gesture.

  26

  Alfie and his companions could neither retreat nor go forward with any hope of surviving, but they remained untouched where they had taken refuge. Gradually, the rest of the I&R platoon moved in closer on either side, but it looked as if they might have difficulty actually linking up with Alfie’s fire team. The range between the platoon and the Federation units was simply too close, even in thick forest. Gaps remained on either side, gaps that could not be crossed safely.

  “Spend your ammo smart,” Alfie told his men. “There’s no telling how much we’ll need it later.” They had already fixed bayonets. If the fighting got much closer, they could be down to blades and fists in a matter of seconds.

  “Tory, this is gettin’ a trifle uncomfortable,” Alfie said after the fight had been going on for forty minutes. He thought it was a magnificent piece of understatement.

  “Just keep both ends down, Alfie,” Kepner replied. “We’ve got these Feddies surrounded now.”

  “Anyone bother to tell them?”

  “They’ll get the message soon enough. If it’s any comfort, the captain just passed the word. The Fourth Regiment is on the ground.”

  “I didn’t hear any shuttles,” Alfie complained. “Where the devil are they?”

  “Ah, none close by. They’re taking care of the cities first. We still have to do for ourselves for a while longer.”

  “The Fourth might as well be back on Buckingham then.”

  At almost any other time, Tory would not have indulgedin such chatter, or permitted others in his platoon to. Sound discipline was not so important at the moment, except that talk reduced concentration on the more important concerns. But … I’ve got to keep him occupied so he doesn’t get some wild notion in that red head of his to get up and charge the Feddies, Tory thought. Alfie Edwards had a low frustration index.

  “It means the lads in front of us are on their own, Alfie-lad. They can’t look for any help, and if they’ve got any sort of communications, they’ll know the end is coming for them. Maybe they’ll wise up and surrender.”

  “And maybe the lasses from Sweet Marie’s will show up to tuck us in tonight,” Alfie said. Sweet Marie’s was the most notorious bordello in the Cheapside district of Westminster, back on Buckingham, the strip where most of the sailors and Marines from the CSF base took their liberties.

  “If they do, you’ll have to cover for me,” Tory said. “I’m a married man, remember?” He frowned. It was a poor time to think of his family. “Time to quit larking about, lad. It’s bad form to let the mind wander too far during a show like this.”

  Tory looked right and left, checking on the placement of his men—those he could see. There wasn’t an RPG left in the platoon. The last grenades had been launched in the first rush to keep Alfie’s fire team safe. Nor was there any immediate prospect of getting even a single chain of grenades from anyone else. When the rest of H&S Company got into position, maybe. Tory had been on to David Spencer. Some of the grenadiers in the other platoons had a few grenades left. Whether or not they still would when they completed the ring around the Feddies was another
question.

  “How much longer, David?” Tory asked, switching channels again. “We’ve still got Alfie’s team hanging by their chins.”

  “I’m not forty yards from you now,” Spencer said. “Alpha’s in position on the other side. We’ve got the Feddies encircled now. We’re just waiting for the captain to decide what we do next.”

  “It would help if someone could drop a few grenades inon top of the Feddies closest to Alfie, with enough warning for our lads to make like worms and burrow in. You’ve got their positions, don’t you?”

  Spencer let his gaze flicker over the head-up display on his visor that showed the positions of Commonwealth helmets. “I see them. I don’t know that any of my lads are up to anything that precise though. Alfie’s almost on top of the nearest Feddies. The lads in Alpha might have a better angle. Let me check. Tell them to get down and stay down.”

  David needed several minutes to arrange the diversion. Before he called Alpha’s lead sergeant, he had to check with Captain McAuliffe. When everything was set, he called Tory back. “Forty-five seconds. As soon as the volley of grenades goes off, tell Alfie to get his lads back to the rest of you. We’ll give them general covering fire, all the way around the corner.”

  Tory checked the time on his visor as he relayed the information to Alfie. Then they all waited.

  Alfie had already squirmed as deeply into the debris on the forest floor as he could. He continued his efforts, though, virtually attempting to flatten his body out by an act of will. He knew the damage that shrapnel could do at close quarters, and he also knew just how close the nearest Feddies were. If any of those grenades went off in the air—detonating on a tree trunk or limb—instead of when they hit the ground, the shrapnel could easily rain in on Alfie and his comrades. Little bits of hot metal could not tell friend from foe.

  He would worry about withdrawing from the exposed position after the grenades went off … if he were still able to worry then. He heard the first grenades tearing through the forest canopy on their high trajectories. Heard them plunging in. He brought his shoulders up a little, against the rim of his helmet. His teeth were gritted, his eyes closed. Should’ve asked how many grenades, he thought. It was too late now. He would just have to wait for the silence to return after the explosions, or until somebody told him to get up and move.