by Rick Shelley
“I understand, sir.”
Dacik nodded. “My staff is set up to give you a complete briefing.”
“One question.” Stossen waited for the general’s nod before he asked it. “How much time do we have?”
Dacik looked away from the colonel. “I can’t even guarantee that you’ll have enough time to reach Telchuk Mountain, Van, even if you go flat out and meet no opposition. If worse comes to worst here, we’ll have to leave you behind if you’re . . . somewhere out there. All I can say is, do the job as quickly as you can, but do it, no matter what. You are to consider the 13th completely expendable. Just do the job.” By the end, Dacik’s voice had faded almost to a whisper.
* * *
“Hey, Sarge! Who fouled up and gave us time off?” Al Bergon asked. Al was the medic for first squad.
“Don’t ask questions,” Joe Baerclau replied. “They’ll find their mistake soon enough. You check your whole squad?”
Bergon nodded. “Everybody’s up to par, medically speaking.”
“Get your rifle cleaned, and then yourself,” Joe said. “This lark won’t last long.” Bergon nodded and strolled off, back to his mates in first squad.
Joe was almost finished cleaning his own wire carbine, the Mark VI Armanoc. The zipper fired short lengths of collapsed uranium wire from twenty-meter spools. Joe could take the rifle apart and put it back together in the dark, or asleep, in fifteen seconds. He had had a lot of practice. Right now, he was scarcely aware of what he was doing. He was already thinking ahead to a hot shower, a fresh uniform, and as much sleep as he could fit in while he had a chance. He had no illusions. Whatever the reason why the entire l3th had been pulled out of the lines, it wasn’t for a vacation. Not with the invasion locked in a bloody stalemate. The 13th was being prepped for something new, and most likely deadly.
Showers had been jury-rigged some thirty meters off. Outside the entrance were stacks of fresh fatigues with the built-in net armor and the camouflage pattern that had been designed specifically for this campaign. On another field table were stacks of towels and small bars of soap.
While he showered, Joe kept his battle helmet close, upended so that he would hear any calls that came in. Even naked and lathered up, he could scarcely consider himself off duty. He anticipated some sort of briefing, as soon as there was anything to say. Word that the colonel had been summoned to headquarters had spread through the 13th in minutes. And as soon as the colonel got back . . .
A smell of cooking food found its way into the shower tent, strong enough to overpower the smell of disinfectant soap. Joe sniffed deeply and hurried through the finish of his shower.
Field kitchens had been set up, and that was even more unusual than being pulled out of the lines. The promise of something better than the self-heating field rations that were a soldier’s normal lot on campaign almost made whatever might come afterward seem worthwhile.
Joe was just tightening the closures on his boots when he got the call from Lieutenant Keye on the noncoms’ circuit. “Chow time. Get everybody in for lunch.”
Joe donned his battle helmet and relayed the call over the platoon channel. “Let’s not have a riot getting there,” he added.
* * *
Most of the men of the 13th got only the good news that evening, that they had another twenty-five hours (the day on Jordan was ninety minutes longer than Earth-standard) to do nothing but eat, sleep, and take care of their gear. Colonel Stossen only briefed his own staff and the company commanders, and even they got only the minimal information they would need before the 13th reached its target. The rest of the officers and the senior noncoms got the news the next morning, just after their third consecutive hot field-kitchen meal.
Joe Baerclau had his men clean their weapons again before lunch.
THE ACCORD’S 15 Spaceborne Assault Teams were the fundamental building blocks of its combined arms organization. Each of the SATs was capable of extended service without support from other units. Besides eight line companies of infantry and four 60-man recon platoons, the team also included a squadron of twenty-four Wasp fighter planes and a battalion of thirty-six Havoc 200mm self-propelled howitzers, with the necessary support personnel. Authorized strength for an SAT was slightly over two thousand officers and enlisted men. None of the SATs on Jordan was at full strength. They hadn’t been at the time of the landing, and all had lost men since.
The Accord of Free Worlds had committed more than thirty-five thousand combat troops to the campaign to liberate Jordan. In addition to the three SATs, there were a half dozen regimental combat teams plus supporting artillery and fighters. With the fleet support in orbit over Jordan, the total commitment topped forty-five thousand.
The 13th’s Wasp Air Group and its Havoc battalion were the only segments involved in the covering attack for the breakout.
There was always enough work involved in an artillery fight to keep all four men of a Havoc’s crew busy. The driver and gun commander sat on either side of the gun barrel, at the front of the turret, about in the middle of the ten-meter length of the gun carriage. The gunner and loader sat farther back, and lower. Right now, the rear compartments of the 13th’s Havocs were more congested than usual. Each gun had taken on a half dozen rounds more than its ammo racks could hold. Those six shells were to be the first expended, in this initial assault.
Gunnery Sergeant Eustace Ponks was the gun commander for Basset two, also known as “the Fat Turtle” after the artwork that decorated the side of the turret next to the commander’s hatch. The Havoc batteries were all named after dog breeds, an ancient pun . . . “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”
“Okay, Simon, start moving us into position,” Ponks said after the fourth round was out.
Simon Kilgore, Basset two’s driver, nodded. Even with radios for intra-crew communication, a nod was a better answer.
Eustace saw the gesture, but he was already relaying the gun’s next target to Karl Mennem, the gunner. Jimmy Ysinde, the loader, already had the round locked in.
A Havoc could fire standing still or moving at sixty kilometers per hour with equal accuracy, but the entire gun carriage had to be pointed roughly toward the target. With a low turret, the gun itself could only be rotated six-and-a-half degrees to either side of the vehicle’s center line. At a range of ten kilometers, a Havoc could drop a shell within its own length from the aim point. Even at twenty kilometers, it seldom hit more than three meters from the point targeted. Since the suspended plasma shells had an effective radius of destruction of twenty meters, that was sufficient.
The Havoc was ten meters long, armored only heavily enough to stop small arms fire. To escape heavier counterbattery fire, it depended on speed and maneuverability. It also depended on infantry to keep enemy ground troops far enough off that they couldn’t use shoulder-operated rockets, and on the Wasps to keep enemy air power out of range.
The 13th’s thirty-two remaining Havocs (four had been lost in the first two weeks of fighting) maneuvered near the center of the Accord lines, far enough behind the front for relative safety, close enough to be able to move forward quickly when a hole opened up. After firing six rounds apiece, the 13th’s Havocs fell silent. In the continuing bombardment, it was unlikely that the enemy would notice that so many guns had quit participating.
“I hope somebody opens something up soon,” Eustace muttered. “I don’t like stooging around in one place.” The thirty-two guns were far too close together for the comfort of any of their crews. Massed artillery made for nothing more than a large, irresistible target.
“We might be safer getting hit here,” Simon said. “I don’t think much of this chase.”
“Hell, once we put a hundred klicks between us and the lines, there shouldn’t be many Heggies around,” Eustace replied. He held up a hand to stop Simon’s rejoinder. “I’m getting something on the command net.”
*
* *
At a dozen points along the Accord perimeter, infantry and armor units were making forays in strength, probing for weak points in the Heggie positions. Between those probes, smaller patrols were also looking for potential avenues out. Beyond the lines, recon patrols had infiltrated to create diversions and plant mines to disrupt Heggie attempts to move troops. Artillery barrages and consolidated attacks by Wasps worked to create gaps. Unless a usable path through the encircling Schlinallines could be found or made, the entire plan would fail. Worse, it might expose the Accord to a devastating counterattack, and that might be fatal to the liberation of Jordan.
* * *
“Mount up!” Joe Baerclau said over his platoon channel. The men of the 13th had not waited inside the APCs that would carry them. The armored vehicles might be tempting to enemy artillery or aircraft. The battle had been in full swing for nearly an hour and a half before the movement order arrived. A gap–marginal, perhaps–had finally been opened up in the Hegemony’s line. Now, all the 13th had to do was get through that hole before someone plugged it.
The Heyer armored personnel carrier was designed for a crew of three and seven passengers, one squad. The Heyers gathered for the 13th were more crowded than that. Some carried twelve men, others as many as fourteen. Crewmen from other units had been replaced by men from the 13th, put into service as operators for the two splat guns each APC sported. Only the original drivers remained. Piloting a Heyer was a little more complicated than driving a skimmer.
The splat gun was a crew-served automatic weapon. It fired the same collapsed uranium wire that the Armanoc zippers did, but at greater speed and from two-hundred-meter reels, rather than the twenty-meter spools the carbines used. On the Heyer, one gun was mounted in front, next to the driver’s position. The other was in a turret, top rear, able to swivel through a complete 360 degrees.
Lieutenant Hilo Keye, Joe Baerclau, and 2nd platoon’s first squad all crammed into one Heyer with two of the enlisted men from headquarters squad. The lieutenant took the front gunner’s position–“So I can see what the hell’s going on,” he mumbled to Joe, who moved to a spot near the hatch at the rear of the vehicle, close to the turret.
Hilo Keye was old for a company-grade officer. He was a mustang, commissioned from the ranks, and he had not even joined the ADF until after his thirtieth birthday. As company commander, he was filling a captain’s slot. His predecessor, Captain Teu Ingels, had been promoted to major and the colonel’s staff, as operations officer. It was common knowledge that Keye’s own promotion was due “any day now.” He had the rare combination of talent, ambition, and family connections to assure him the fast track upward. As long as he survived.
There were four veterans in the first squad of 2nd platoon, Echo Company. Sergeant Ezra Frain was twenty years old, tall and thin with bright red hair and green eyes. His home world, Highland, was one of the places where Accord and local forces had defeated an invasion by the Schlinal Hegemony. Ezra had been serving in his planetary defense force. After that fight, he had transferred to the ADF, and to the 13th SAT.
Corporal Mort Jaiffer was the assistant squad leader, which meant that he ran the squad’ s second fire team. At twenty-eight, he was the old man of the squad. He was also the intellectual. A large, hulking man with a growing bald spot on the top of his head, he had been an associate professor of history and political science before joining the ADF. He had turned down the opportunity to become an officer and had resisted promotion to corporal for as long as he could.
Al Bergon and Wiz Mackey were still privates. The SATs did not promote men simply because of longevity. Al was twenty-three, tall, thin, and dark. He doubled as the squad’s medic. Wiz was two years younger, tall, big-boned, and fair-haired. Both of them had been critically wounded during their last campaign, on Porter. They had been given the option of transferring out of the 13th. Neither had taken it.
The three rookies had come to the squad together, straight out of the SAT training camp. Of the three, only Olly Wytten would have qualified for assignment to an SAT under the old guidelines–combat experience or a year in the ADF. He had been in uniform for a year before volunteering for the elite assault teams. Of average height and weight, Olly Wytten looked hard and angular, and much older than his twenty-one years. Black hair and eyes and a dark complexion made him look even more menacing than he was. In training, he had proved adept at everything demanded of him. He picked up combat skills more rapidly than most. Joe Baerclau and Ezra Frain had tabbed him as the most promising of the replacements.
Carl Eames was from Bancroft, Joe Baerclau’s homeworld, but not from the same region. Not yet twenty, Carl seemed rather awkward at everything he did, but–somehow–he did it. Even his speech was awkward, hesitant. As a result, he said very little. He had grown up on an isolated farm. He was tall and heavy, with the muscles of a man who had known nothing but hard manual labor for a lot of years.
Phil “Pit” Tymphe was from Ceej, Tau Ceti IV, one of the very first worlds settled directly from Earth. The nickname came from his initials. He was another quiet one, with nondescript brown hair and eyes, and a vague smoothness to his face. He did have his moments, especially in any sort of competition, whether training or real combat. Almost as short as Sergeant Baerclau, he was ten kilograms heavier, and none of it was fat.
The APC started moving forward almost before Joe got the hatch secured at the rear. Joe tapped Wiz Mackey on the shoulder. Wiz was at the rear splat gun, his head up in the turret. He leaned down to see what the sergeant wanted.
“Make sure that gun’s ready to fire,” Joe said over a private radio channel. “And keep your eyes peeled. These things are magnets for trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” Wiz said, his voice cold. “I ain’t paid off my debt to the Heggies yet.” His best friend had been killed in the fighting on Porter.
“Don’t let it get personal,” Joe told him, his voice almost as hard as Wiz’s. “That blinds you worse’n booze.”
Wiz didn’t reply. He just moved his head back up into the turret and traversed it through ninety degrees, then back to its original position.
Joe squeezed onto the bench seat on the right side of the APC. There was no way this ride could be comfortable, but it would go better on his butt than on his feet.
* * *
Turnaround time was under ten minutes. The ground crews replaced the batteries in the Wasp fighters and replenished munitions. For this fight, the weapons were cannons and rockets.
Lieutenant Zel Paitcher had not moved in the cockpit of Blue two after landing. He hadn’t even taken his hands off of the control yoke except to hit the power-down switch. Outside, the ground crew had worked with its usual expertise, as polished as any racing pit crew.
Zel did blink several times. He breathed deeply and slowly, working to keep his nerves under control. It was difficult to move back and forth between the adrenaline rush of combat and the dead time on the ground. Getting back “up” could be a problem, and that was the sort of problem that could prove fatal. The Heggies had plenty of fighters of their own around, and pilots who knew how to work them. For just an instant, Zel considered popping a stimtab. That would perk him up again, but he decided against it. Too much, too soon.
“All buttoned up, sir,” Roo Vernon, crew chief for Blue one and Blue two, said. “You’re ready to go.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Zel replied. He switched radio frequencies. “Slee?”
“Let’s go.” Slee Reston had just made captain, leader of the eight Wasps of Blue Flight.
The two Wasps lifted silently into the growing dark. In the night, the kidney-shaped fighters were almost perfectly invisible, to optics or electronics. The pilot sat in an ejectable cockpit near the center of the leading edge. The twin antigrav engines and their batteries were in bulging pods at either side. Between power pods and cockpit, the rest of the Wasp was given over to payload, in a number of
possible configurations. The new Wasps, the Mark IVs, had a couple of refinements to previous models. Two batteries serviced each motor, extending the plane’s maximum air time by nearly 50 percent, to just over ninety minutes. And a rear-firing five-barrel cannon had been installed, behind and below the cockpit, a permanent addition to discourage enemy fighters coming up from behind.
The Wasps of Blue Flight each carried two of those five-barreled cannons, one facing rear and, in the current configuration, another facing forward, in a pod just below the cockpit. Their 25mm depleted uranium rounds separated into 15mm-long slivers after being fired. With each barrel firing sixty rounds a second, one Wasp could put a lot of metal on a very small target. Not even the best personal armor could withstand that sort of onslaught, and an enemy fighter might be brought down that way . . . with a little luck.
Zel blinked once more, consciously, right before he pulled back on the yoke and took his Wasp into the air, just meters from Slee’s. Even this close, the other Wasp was already virtually invisible. In a few more minutes, as evening dusk settled into night, the planes would be invisible to each other even in tight formation. They would rely exclusively on instruments. The final line was an automatic crash avoidance override that would cause the Wasps to veer apart if they came within fifty centimeters of each other. That system was as nearly foolproof as any.