Return to Camerein

by Rick Shelley

  There was no mad scurrying about when the news came. This possibility had been planned for. The civilians were in the safest positions the terrain offered, in the dense growth close to the river, partly sheltered on the land side by the rotting carcass of a fallen tree that had not been completely recycled yet by nature. One squad of Marines—the headquarters squad—was with the civilians to make certain that they stayed down, and to serve as a final line of defense. The rest of the detachment was spaced around in strong defensive positions, a perimeter concentrated around a semicircle backed against the Rift River.

  “I want numbers as quickly as possible. How many mendid they bring in?” David said over a radio link that included Lieutenant Hopewell and all of the noncoms. The Federation soldiers knew where they were. There was no longer any purpose to radio silence. All that would do would cripple the Marines’ ability to work together most efficiently.

  No Federation soldiers had yet been seen directly. The alarms had come from the snoops that the Marines had planted farther out, small detection devices that could be buried with just motion sensors, cameras, and transmitters showing above ground. Only a one-inch knob was visible if the device was planted properly. The video could be viewed on the mapboards that officers and noncoms carried or, with slightly less clarity, on a helmet visor’s head-up display.

  Two groups of Federation troops were on courses that would meet at the river, almost precisely where the group had come across from the higher south bank. They must have at least scouts in the center, Spencer thought. Coming in from however far out to intercept us. They couldn’t have known that we would stay right here.

  It wasn’t much of a stretch for David to assume that the Federation would have a decent count of his people. They might slightly overestimate the number of Marines if they hadn’t taken a body count where the shuttles had been destroyed. And if the enemy soldiers had made any investigation of the hotel, they would also have a close count on the number of civilians with them.

  They wouldn’t send in fewer men than they estimate we have, Spencer told himself. If it were me, I’d want no less than two-to-one odds in my favor on a go like this, and I’d like the odds even better.

  If it hadn’t been for the civilians, David would not have been gravely concerned with two-to-one odds—not against any Federation troops he had fought before. His men had faced considerably longer odds and won. But the presence of noncombatants changed the equation. They couldn’t fight. They didn’t have the training or gear to allow themto elude the enemy. And minding them meant that David’s tactical hands were tied. Using his headquarters squad as an inner defense—and to tend the civilians—diminished his effective manpower.

  “Looks like a platoon on either side,” Alfie Edwards said on his link to David. “Two skirmish lines in either group, the second back far enough that we can’t take them all out at once.”

  “But not equal lines,” David said, looking at the video from the snoops that was playing on his mapboard. Two platoons would mean almost even odds, not at all what he expected. “More like three squads up front and one behind. There might be another line farther back, still out of sight,” he added. He switched channels to get back to Hopewell and all of the noncoms at once. “We let the first lines get within sixty yards. At that point, I want every grenadier to put a full clip of grenades down on the first skirmish line. Saturation. We account for the front lines and worry about the rear guard after.”

  “They can’t know absolutely for certain that we’re still here,” Alfie said. “We might have slipped east or west, just this side of the river. Unless there are more of them moving in that way, maybe still farther off.”

  “We’ve got snoops planted on those approaches as well,” Hopewell said.

  “They know where we are,” David said. “If they didn’t before, by some wild chance, they must now, since we’ve been using our radios. In any case, we’ll worry about any other groups of Feddies later, if we have to. For now, we concentrate on the enemies we can see. Get the grenadiers ready. It shouldn’t be long now.”

  David made use of the time. Radio silence had been broken. The Federation apparently knew, or strongly suspected, where they were. David made several calls, trying to raise the fleet that was supposed to be on hand to land the rest of 2nd Regiment. He tried every channel that the fleet’s combat intelligence center (CIC) and regimental operations should be monitoring. There was no response. The invasion was already more than twelve hours late.

  Igor Vilnuf was the grenadier for his fire team. He had a new clip, five grenades, loaded, and the launcher’s sights were set for sixty yards. Igor could see soldiers now, and they were getting close to the sixty-yard mark. He felt a familiar queasiness in his gut. It wasn’t exactly fear, more like stage fright. The feeling came every time he knew that combat was close, and disappeared as soon as the fighting started.

  He blinked twice, consciously. The launcher was in his hands, ready to fire. At his side he had his rifle where he could grab it quickly once he fired the last rocket-propelled grenade in the clip. The safeties were off on both weapons. That was a breach of SOP, standard operating procedures, but it was a breach shared by every grenadier in the unit. Routinely. No one ever faulted them for it.

  Corporal Nace Jeffries, the fire team leader, slapped Igor on the shoulder. It was the signal he had been waiting for. Igor started firing, adjusting his aim slightly for each grenade. A dozen other men were doing the same thing.

  The result might have appeared to be the opening of a vent from Hell—a pair of vents, one to the northeast, the other to the northwest. In each case, most of the grenades impacted within an arc fifteen yards thick centered a little more than fifty yards out from the grenadier. Some of the grenades fell well off the mark, though, deflected by tree trunks or the thick tangle of vines and branches overhead. Still, there were enough explosions in the target area to do the job. The blasts scattered thousands of fragments of shrapnel, ten percent of them white phosphorus. The explosions toppled trees and dug shallow craters. Shrapnel bit into everything. The phosphorus started fires where it hit—in a tree or a human body. Those fires were brief but intense. The forest was too damp to allow great wildfires to grow from such small seeds. The effect on human fleshcould be devastating, though. No medical nanobug system could control burning phosphorus.

  The forest canopy was so tightly interwoven that the fall of one tree could bring down its neighbors. Conversely, a tree might be severed low and hang in place, unable to fall because of the interwoven branches above and vines that tied it to other trees—a Damoclean blade hanging until the unrelenting stress of gravity finally brought it down.

  Prince George hugged his shotgun, itching to take part in the fight. Federation soldiers were more worthy targets than cachouri birds. Those soldiers represented the cause for his seven years of isolation and exile. But the prince did remain down after the shattering series of explosions and the start of the ensuing rifle fire. He knew that he had been moved to the most sheltered bit of cover available. It was not what he would have chosen for himself. Captain Spencer had led him to the place and asked—told—him to get down and stay put. George was behind the thickest portion of a fallen tree trunk, half under it. The odors of moss and rotting wood were thick, until they were smothered by the drifting smells of burning wood and flesh, of explosive powders and their blasts.

  It isn’t proper for a Windsor to cower from danger, he told himself. The longer the fight continued, the more difficult it would be to contain his urge to get up and start shooting. If the enemy gets close, my shotgun might really add something to the defense. He realized that he was rationalizing, looking for an excuse. But there was a Marine close, with strict orders. If the prince tried to get up, the man was instructed to put him back down, quickly, with force if necessary. The way Captain Spencer had put it was “Even if you have to sit on him.” Prince George had no doubt that the private would obey his orders.

  There was incoming r
ifle fire. Several times, George heard bullets thunk into the tree that sheltered him. A few times, he fancied that he heard rounds flying by, not too far overhead.

  How could anyone have survived that salvo of grenades? he wondered. It should have blasted them all Still, there was not a lot of incoming rifle fire. There were clearly few of the enemy out there shooting.

  “Alfie, we need to get a couple of squads out there to take care of that second line and see if there are any more behind them,” Spencer said.

  “We can go around from the flank on either side, but that’ll leave a couple of gaping holes in the perimeter,” Alfie replied.

  “I sure as hell can’t call in reinforcements.”

  “Or we could just go out on one side, sweep around and use the same lads to clear out both groups,” Alfie said.

  Spencer nodded. “Try that.” But as Alfie took half of his platoon out of the left side of the semicircle, David thought, You’ve really done it this time. Stuck on an enemy world, no escape, no retreat, and the Feddies know exactly where you are. What did not cross his mind was It’s not my fault; I can’t help it that the invasion didn’t come in on time. It simply did not occur to him to look for scapegoats. He was too busy trying to find a way, despite the setbacks, to accomplish the mission he had been given, to keep Prince George and the others safe until they could be returned to the Second Commonwealth.

  Without detectors in orbit to make observations and feed information, the commandos did not have the luxury of being able to count the number of Federation soldiers with active electronics in the area. The range of the detectors built into Commonwealth battle helmets was too limited without that additional input. There might be twenty men facing the detachment—or two thousand. David hoped that there were no more than the squads that they had spotted behind the main Federation skirmish lines, because if they had additional reinforcements coming in from behind, or approaching along the river bank from either or both sides, the end might come all too quickly.

  Spencer made another series of calls, praying that a Commonwealth ship would answer. But there was only silence.

  He passed the word to the squads in the perimeter to try to keep the known enemy troops pinned down while Alfie’s patrol worked to flank them. He worried about the amount of ammunition they were expending. There were no reserves over and above what the men carried, and there were no shuttles waiting to bring in new stocks when those were gone.

  We’ve tried drastic course changes to throw them off the scent; then staying on the same course, he thought. If we get rid of this lot, what do we do then? Maybe the one thing they won’t expect is for us to stay right here and not move at all

  There was no way he could guarantee that any choice would be correct, that it would make any difference. Staying put might work for a time. If the enemy put the next ambushing force far enough away, then waited before starting to move back in, they might manage a day’s respite. If I knew that the fleet was coming for sure, that it was just a day late … But he did not, could not, know when or if help would come.

  An explosion overhead brought Spencer’s thoughts back to the immediate situation. The crown of a tree started to collapse but got caught in a tangle of vines and branches. Debris rained down, along with several birds and monkeylike creatures. The animals were all dead when they hit the ground.

  “Where did that come from?” David asked on an all-hands circuit. There had been few grenades coming in from the north. The surviving Federation soldiers there were too far away for effective use of RPGs. In addition, the Federation grenade launcher was single shot.

  “I think it came from behind,” Mitch Naughton said. “We’re taking light rifle fire too. It has to be coming from the bluff across the river.”

  “Get the civilians ready to move, Mitch. We’re not protected on that side.” So much for staying put, David thought.

  Naughton switched to a private channel. “Cap, I think moving might be worse than stayin’ here. There’s a lot of wood between us and the bluffs. Not much is getting through, and they sure can’t see what they’re shooting at.”

  “No good, Mitch,” David said on the same channel. “It won’t take them long to open up a few holes with grenades. We’ll follow Alfie’s two squads around, then move past them, keep those squads between us and the Feddies we know about down here. We’ve got to get out of range of whatever they’ve got behind us, even if it’s across the river.”

  Spencer switched channels to tell Tony Hopewell, Alfie Edwards, and Will Cordamon what they were going to do. “Will, I want you to send one squad around the other way. Tell them to be careful that they don’t start exchanging fire with Alfie’s lads, but get out to those Feddies. I want to put paid to the enemy in front of us in a hurry.”

  Vepper Holford gave little thought to Prince George. He stayed close out of habit so deeply ingrained that it did not require thought, but that was the extent of it. When the Marines told them to get up, that they had to move, Vepper resisted, silently, at first. Moving seemed infinitely more dangerous than remaining where he was, pressed into the ground and the rotting tree trunk. Get up, with gunfire coming in from at least two directions? But the Marines offered no choice, and Holford had no desire to find out what they might do if he refused to move. As much as he feared Federation gunfire, the Commonwealth Marines were closer, a more immediate threat.

  Vepper tried to shrink within himself. He stayed crouched over, shoulders drawn in as if he might make himself a smaller target by those minimal efforts. It did occur to him that he might look ridiculous, but he was willing to suffer that indignity out here in the jungle, as long as he did not have to suffer anything more physically painful. Vepper had never known true pain, nothing beyondthe minor aches that anyone might suffer temporarily. He did not want to start now.

  Most of his fellow exiles were also trying to present as small a target as they could. Only Prince George seemed oblivious to the danger. He stood erect and looked around casually, his shotgun held across his body in both hands as if he were hunting game birds in some quiet preserve.

  George was looking for targets. He welcomed the chance to get up and move. He would be even more delighted if he managed to get off a shot or two. If he saw an enemy, if any came within range of his shotgun, he would take the shots. George knew that the enemy would have to be dangerously close for his weapon to have much effect. The only shells he had were birdshot.

  “Don’t bunch up,” one of the faceless Marines told the civilians. “That makes you too inviting a target.”

  People moved away from each other, if reluctantly, and only by a step. They looked around. The civilians were mostly frightened, and showed it. They had to fight the atavistic urge to herd together to escape the predators. The squad of commandos split. Half moved to either side of their charges. Lead Sergeant Naughton gestured in the direction they were to go.

  “Just stay with us. Keep your ears open. If any of us yell ‘Down!’ just drop to the ground and ask questions later.”

  The squads that Alfie had led out moved quickly and quietly. This was the kind of work that they had trained for, and most of these men welcomed movement and the chance to strike at the enemy. In the dark, they had a slight advantage. Commonwealth night-vision gear was better than that used by the Federation. In the forest, moving from tree to tree, the commandos were virtually invisible. Only the muzzle flashes from their weapons were likely to give them away, and they moved after each shot.

  Alfie left second squad even with the known Federation positions and took first squad on another forty yards. Thatwould give them almost a ring of fire with what was coming from the rest of the detachment. It would be hard for the enemy to find cover from fire reaching for them from three sides.

  “You put grenades in on the near squad,” he told second squad’s sergeant. “We’ll drop on the other.” Alfie allowed fifteen seconds for the grenadiers to get ready, then gave the command.

  Once more an area of jungle eru
pted. “We’re moving in!” Alfie shouted on his link to Spencer. The rest of the commandos stopped firing as the two squads ran in to finish the work of their grenades. Two minutes was all the cleanup took. Relative silence returned to the forest. Only a few scattered shots came from the top of the bluff across the river.

  Five minutes later, the commandos and civilians were together, moving west, one hundred fifty yards from the river. “We’ve got to throw them off long enough for us to find good defensive positions,” Spencer said, conferring with Hopewell and the senior sergeants. “This might give us that time.”

  Before moving, he had” tried once more to raise the hoped-for fleet. There was still no answer. They were seventeen hours late.

  Part 5

  21

  Dirigent’s Council of Regiments had laid down strict guidelines for the delegations from the Second Commonwealth and the Confederation of Human Worlds. They might dispatch message rockets from the ships that had brought them to Dirigent at will, as long as they were launched along paths prescribed by Space Traffic Control. But any incoming MRs had to be routed to a pickup point under the control of Dirigent. “Any object arriving out of Q-space anywhere else in our system will be treated as a potentially hostile incursion and destroyed” had been the blunt explanation. The designated arrival area was a half million miles out. Even a fast courier spacecraft needed eight hours to reach the ships in orbit from that distance.

  “The real problem is that we have no way to estimate how long it might take the leaders on Union to decide how to respond to Ramirez’s message,” Prince William told Ian Shrikes the morning after the peace talks had been suspended. “The reply might come in before the day is out, or not for a week or more.”