by Rick Shelley
Joe Baerclau passed out when the needle went into his arm. Al used the opportunity to slap a four-hour sleep patch on his neck.
THE 13TH buried its dead, marking the location so that the bodies could be retrieved later, if that were possible. The wounded were patched up. Four of the Heyers were used as ambulances. A Heyer could hold only three men on stretchers or in portable trauma tubes. The healthy soldiers displaced from those APCs were crowded into other vehicles.
The rains that had reached the battlefield strengthened and followed the 13th once it started off to the northwest again. The treads on Heyers and Havocs chewed up wet ground and grass, leaving a clear trail for anyone to follow.
Once the 13th was moving, Colonel Stossen and his staff continued conferring over the radio. The communications net was as nearly secure as possible. The various channels were not assigned to specific frequencies. Instead, each channel was switched among as many as a dozen different frequencies according to computer programming. With frequencies being automatically changed as often as three times a second, there was little chance that an eavesdropper would hear enough of any conversation to make sense of it. Even a captured helmet would do little good. Any officer or noncom could disable its communications links by code. Keeping track of helmets was one of the routine duties of squad leaders and their assistants.
“They know we’re out here,” Stossen said shortly after the 13th started moving again. “It’s just luck that our reccers spotted them before they got to us this time. Next time, we might not be so lucky. What can we do to improve our odds?”
“The fleet can’t keep enough spyeyes in orbit to do much better,” Bal Kenneck said. “Last I heard from CIC, the eyes last an average of six hours before the Heggies shoot them down. That leaves alot of gaps. When one eye goes out, it takes time to get another into position. Of course,” he added, “we’re shooting down their spyeyes just as quickly, maybe a little more so.”
“How do we make up the slack?” Stossen asked.
“The best way would be to get more Wasp flights out here,” Kenneck said. “We can put our recon platoons out a little farther, but there’s not a hell of a lot more they can do from inside Heyers, and we’re traveling too fast to put them on foot.”
“We can’t use the Wasps for recon, not on a regular basis,” Teu Ingels said. “We’re going to have trouble getting them for combat support even. There’s simply too much work and too few Wasps. The ones that came out this time were chased all of the way out by Boems. We can’t afford the losses for recon.”
“You’re telling me there’s nothing we can do?” Stossen asked.
“Not much,” Ingels said. “We’re pretty much limited to what we get from CIC.”
“And that’s what the trouble was before,” Dezo Parks said, his first contribution to the conversation.
“Unless and until we get out and walk,” Ingels said. “I, uh, presume that’s out of the question until we get a lot closer to our objective?”
“Absolutely,” Stossen agreed. “All we can do, then, is push on as fast as these mixers will go.”
“Unfortunately,” Kenneck said.
“Give the order, Dezo,” Stossen said. “Full out. Spread the reccers out a little more, and farther out from the main body.”
“Too far’s no good either,” Kenneck interrupted. “Too much chance for the Heggies to slip in between, like they almost did this time.”
“Looks like all we can do is go like hell until dark, make our course change, and hope the Heggies don’t have anything close enough to pick us up until it’s too late for an intercept,” Ingels said.
“And we’ve still got to find time to rest the men for a few hours,” Parks added. “Soon as they come down from this fight, they’re going to be more beat than ever. They can’t go forever on stimtabs.”
Stossen closed his eyes for a moment. Sleep ... what’s that?
“If we’re going to get any at all,” he said finally, “it won’t be much. After we make our turn, we’ll go to ground, get the thermal tarps spread. Maybe that’ll help throw the Heggies off.”
But he couldn’t help thinking, Or give them a chance to catch us.
* * *
It was difficult making a proper examination while the APC pounded along at forty-five kilometers per hour, but the sleep patch on Joe Baerclau would run out soon, and Al Bergon wanted to get what he had to do done before the Bear woke. As soon as the sergeant realized that he had been out for four hours, he was going to be mad, no matter how necessary the knockout had been.
Al pulled the soaker off of Baerclau’s shoulder. The wound was almost completely healed over. The new skin was an angry pink, but the cuts had healed. What Al was interested in were the three tiny pimples that had formed near the exit wound on the back of the shoulder. He swabbed them with antiseptic, then used a pair of tweezers to pop them and extract the tiny bone chips that the nanobots had deposited there. After another antiseptic swab, he put a small soaker over the area of the exit wound. The entrance wound no longer needed a dressing.
“Well, how is he?” Ezra Frain asked.
“Okay,” Al said. “By the time he wakes up, even his blood should be replaced.”
“Good as new and mad as hell,” Mort Jaiffer observed. “He’s not going to like the way you zapped him.”
“I didn’t zap him, he passed out,” Al said.
“If you think he’ll buy that, let me sell you my return-trip pass, good for any shuttle up to the fleet,” Wiz Mackey said with a sour laugh.
The squad’s three new men just sat and listened. None of them felt confident enough around the veterans yet to get into that sort of discussion without an obvious invitation. It didn’t matter that all of the new men had already seen combat with the squad, that they were no longer “raw” rookies. In a fight, each of them was paired with one of the veterans, but when they weren’t in a fight, they were–mostly–on their own.
“You did the right thing, Bergon,” Lieutenant Keye said from his position at the front splat gun. “The Bear gives you any grief, I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Al looked at the timeline on his visor, then looked at Baerclau again. Al hadn’t checked the exact time when he slapped on the sleep patch, but it couldn’t be good for more than another five minutes. Of course, there was nothing that said that Baerclau had to wake up precisely when the medication expired. He had been tired enough to sleep longer than that without help.
Just then the Heyer took a particularly hard jounce and Bergon grinned through gritted teeth. If the Bear could sleep through this ride, he could sleep through anything.
A soft groan did escape Joe’s lips, though his eyes didn’t open right away. Another two minutes passed before that happened. His gaze was vacant; uncomprehending, not as it would have been if he were waking normally. Joe was a veteran mudder. On campaign, he came awake instantly alert if there were the slightly possibility of enemy activity anywhere near.
After a time, Joe blinked–once slowly and then, after a short pause, several times in quick succession.
“What?” he managed. But his throat was dry. His voice cracked. Al put a canteen to the Bear’s lips.
“We’re back under way,” Al explained while Joe took a short sip of water.
Joe, took a deep breath and closed his eyes again for a moment while his mind tried to close the gap between his last memories and the present.
“How long?” he asked finally.
“Four hours, right on the button,” Al said. “The bone-chips are out of your shoulder, the wounds are almost healed, and you’re fit for duty again.”
Joe moved his left arm, experimentally at first, then with more vigor. There was no pain or restriction. Then he turned his head to look.
“Sure tore hell out of my fatigues.” There was more, but now, with his hea
d clearing, there was little chance that he would complain about being zapped for four hours. That had been the injury speaking.
“Don’t sweat it,” Ezra said. “I’ll slap a weaver patch over it and you’ll look good as new in an hour.”
Lieutenant Keye turned and pointed at his helmet. Joe put his on to hear what the lieutenant had to say.
“You really feeling fit?”
Joe took time to think it over before he answered. “Yes, sir, especially with the nap. Anyone else have a chance to sleep?”
“Only what little they could get in here.”
“Little is right,” Joe said. “We’re not going to be much good in a fight if the men don’t get some downtime first.”
“Can’t be helped. We’re trying to avoid another fight. After dark, we might get a couple of hours.”
“What’s the situation now, sir?”
“We’ve got that second river crossing coming up soon. That’s likely to be our most vulnerable time until we get near where we’re going. Recon’s already at the river and beyond. Last word I had was that there’s no sign of Heggies.”
“We didn’t get much advance word the last time,” Joe commented. “The Heggies were almost on top of us before we knew they were there.”
“I think we’re getting better dope now. Nobody wants a repeat of this morning.”
Joe turned on the bench and opened one of the firing ports in the side wall. It was still raining outside, heavily. The sky was almost dark enough for dusk. Joe checked the time, saw that there were still another four hours before sunset, and shook his head. Then he looked at Al again.
“Maybe you should have hit everybody with sleep patches. That way, maybe we’d all be rested.” While he talked, Joe ran his helmet’s diagnostics program. The helmet had taken quite a few wire hits. Then he checked his rifle.
“If I was sure we had the time, I’d do it now,” Al said, knowing that the Bear wasn’t serious. “Leave you on watch while the rest of us catch up.”
* * *
There were only four Wasps of Blue Flight in the air. Two had been destroyed. Two were being held back to help in defense of the main Accord foothold on Jordan. The fighting back there had been raging for more than twenty-one hours. A joke so old that its origins could no longer be traced was being repeated with distressing frequency. “The situation here is quite fluid.” “What’s that mean?” “It means we’re up the creek.”
Zel wasn’t certain that he really understood what was going on, but he had spent more than half of the past twenty-one hours in the air. He decided that he was ahead of the game if he even remembered his name. Along much of the Accord perimeter, there was no clearly definable front left. In some places, the Accord had made advances. Elsewhere, they had been forced to retreat. Units were out of contact with their flanking units. Several times, Wasps had been asked to do flybys just to locate friendly units.
Zel yawned, then blinked and took a careful scan of his heads-up display and the two monitors on the panel below it. With a little luck, they’d get out and back this time without any fighting. Cover the river crossing for the mudders. Look for any sign of another Heggie force moving toward them. Do what you have to do. Simple, if vague, instructions. But recon work was something of a break.
As long as no Boems showed up to contest the operation.
“There’s the river,” Slee said. “To the right, angled about ten degrees right of your centerline.”
Zel looked at the mapboard monitor rather than out the canopy. The monitor gave a clearer view.
“How far are we from the ford?” Zel asked.
“Shouldn’t be more than twenty klicks.”
“How far out do we stooge around?” was Zel’s next question.
“We’ll do a grid search out to thirty klicks around the ford,” Slee said. He and Zel would take the near side of the river, the other two Wasps the far side.
“We’ve already got a few Heyers across,” Slee reminded the others. “Reccers there to guard the crossing point.”
“How many Heyers?” Zel asked.
There was a pause before Slee had the answer. “Eleven. Two full recon platoons, spread out in a semicircle.”
“There,” Zel said. “Picking up those blips now.” He counted carefully. Eleven–no more, and no less. Now let’s see if they’ve got any company, he thought as he turned Blue two onto the next leg of its search pattern.
* * *
Colonel Stossen made certain that his APC crossed the river early, with the infantry companies that followed the first two Havoc batteries. The word from the Wasps overhead was encouraging. They hadn’t spotted anything anywhere near.
“Get across as fast as possible,” Stossen told the commanders of the remaining companies and support units. “Every minute we’re sitting here, the more danger we’re in.”
The first men across were out of their Heyers now, in a two-tiered defensive line. There might not be Heggies close . . . or again, there might be.
On another channel, Stossen told his exec. “I want to know the instant we’ve got half of the Team across.”
Switching channels again, Stossen talked with the leader of Blue Flight. “You’re sure there’s no enemy activity around us?”
“As sure as we can be, Colonel,” Slee Reston replied. “They haven’t even sent Boems to challenge us, and we’ve been drawing them the way a rotting carcass draws maggots.”
Stossen wrinkled his nose at the image. “How far out have you searched?”
“A fifty-klick radius around your position, Colonel. Not a glimmer of Heggies. Of course, there could be a regiment of infantry and we might miss them, but there are sure as hell no tanks or trucks. Even with heat tarps, we’ve been low enough to pick up a magnetic signature.”
“How much time over us do you have left?” Stossen asked.
“Twenty minutes unless you’re set up to replace our batteries here.”
“Hold on a second. Let me see if your vans are across yet.”
They were, only just.
* * *
Slee and Zel flew broad figure-eight patterns over the 13th while the other Wasps landed for fresh batteries. As soon as the others were back in the air, Blue one and Blue two landed.
“Slummin’, are you, sir?” Roo Vernon, crew chief for the first two Wasps of Blue Flight asked as soon as Slee was on the ground. The ground crew was already moving toward the two fighters.
“Somebody’s got to keep you out of trouble,” Slee replied. As usual during land-and-lift maneuvers, neither Slee nor Zel bothered to get out of his cockpit or open his canopy. They spoke with Vernon over the radio.
“You got any idea what this is all about?” Roo asked. The depleted batteries were out of both Wasps. The new ones were being inserted and connected.
“Not a glimmer, Chief,” Slee admitted. “Thought maybe you’d picked up the dirt by now.”
“Hell, they don’t tell us nothin’,” Roo complained. “Didn’t even know you were around till they told us to unbutton to service four Wasps.”
“See you later, maybe,” Slee said. The battery hatches were sealed. Slee and Zel restarted their engines, and they were off, back up into the rain.
* * *
“Half the Team’s across, sir,” Dezo reported. It was a little more than half, actually, since all of the headquarters and support personnel were across. But half of the recon platoons, line companies, and artillery were now on the northwest bank. And the four Wasps were all back in the air.
“Move the lead recon units out,” Stossen ordered. “I’ll have the Wasps check the course we’re taking.”
It was only ten minutes later that Slee Reston reported a strong enemy presence eighty kilometers away, blocking the route that the 13th was on.
EVERYTHING that the sensors of Blue Flight saw was relayed directly
to Bal Kenneck. Stossen gave the Wasps orders to do whatever they could to hurt the Heggies. “All out. They’ve got to think that we’re heading straight for them with everything we’ve got.”
The last elements of the 13th were crossing the river. Stossen sent 1st and 3rd recon ahead with orders similar to those he had given the Wasps. Afghan Battery went with them.
“Hold them down,” Stossen told the unit commanders. “Make them think you’re half the 13th and that the rest of us are right behind you.”
Stossen’s staff members came to his APC for a face-to-face. The colonel had his mapboard open before they arrived.
“This could be it,” Stossen said. The others had been linked in for his orders to the Wasps and the lead ground units. “We’ve got to hold those Heggies where they are.”
“It looks like a reinforced regiment,” Bal Kenneck said. “Two thousand men, minimum, perhaps twenty-five hundred. Two battalions of armor. I don’t know where they came from. With that many assets, they must have air ready to come in when they’re needed.”
Stossen shrugged.
“There’s not much chance that 120 mudders, 5 Havocs, and 4 Wasps can keep a regiment bottled up for long,” Teu Ingels said. “What we need to worry about is that regiment swinging around behind us after we make the turn up into that valley. They could bottle us up without much trouble. If that happens, we’ll play hell getting out. It certainly doesn’t look as if there are any other routes, not that we can take vehicles over.”