by Rick Shelley
Joe Baerclau came over to first squad then. “You’ve got about forty-five minutes left. The Heyers will be here then, and we’re gonna shove off as soon as they get here.”
“Where to, Sarge?” Mort asked.
Joe shook his head. “Beats me. East, I think, and don’t ask me what’s there ‘cause I don’t know.”
“Just another fancy run?” Ezra asked, getting out of his foxhole and walking over to meet Joe.
“Could be. Maybe the colonel’s figured a way to get us back, or up to the ships. We go far enough off, the Heggies won’t be able to get planes in to intercept the shuttles. But don’t go banking on that,” he added quickly. “That’s just my own wild guess. Nobody’s said anything about that.” I shouldn’t even have mentioned it, Joe thought, almost angry at himself. It was too good a way to start wild rumors. “Far as I know, we’re just playing keepaway, getting those civilians as far from the Heggies as we can.”
“And we can go farther and faster in the mixers,” Mort said.
“So the Heyers aren’t comfy,” Joe said. “They do the job.”
“What’s east of here?” Al Bergon asked. “More mountains?”
Joe’s smile was brief and restrained. He had taken a long look at his mapboard while Lieutenant Keye was briefing the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants. “Not so much. We head due east, there’s foothills, then rolling countryside. Broad valleys framing rivers. Some rocky terrain for about three-hundred klicks, something like the rift valley on Porter but not so extreme. Good country to hide in.”
“And no Heggies?” Pit Tymphe asked.
“Not as we know of. Not much of anybody.”
“Why not?” Mort asked.
“Guess there’s nothing there anybody wants. Nothing special in the way of farmland or minerals. Not enough people on Jordan to make it worthwhile.” A lot of worlds were like that. Even though some of them, like Jordan, had been settled for a thousand years or more, their populations were still small enough that there was no mad scramble for every hectare of usable land. The population of Jordan had reached nearly three million before the Schlinal invasion. Even so, less than 20 percent of the “good” land was occupied, or used for anything more than casual hiking and camping. The ecological horror stories that had left Earth with the earliest colonists continued to haunt people wherever they went.
“Anyway, get anything done that needs doing and be ready to load up when the Heyers get here,” Joe said. “Colonel’s anxious to get moving. We’ve been in one place too long.”
When the squad turned to gathering their gear, Joe beckoned Al away from the others.
“What is it?” Al asked when they were several meters away from the rest.
“Special instructions for the medics. The drivers of those Heyers have been on the go for close to two days without sleep. They get here and we load up, the first thing you do is hit the driver with a four-hour sleep patch. Get him settled in the back.”
“We’re gonna knock out all those drivers? That’s . . . bizarre.”
Joe nodded. Bizarre was a good word for what he thought might be the strangest order he had received in all his years as a soldier. “All of them. That comes direct from the Colonel. Guess he figures it’s the only way anyone can sleep in a Heyer.”
“I can believe that,” Al said.
“Just be ready, and get one of the others to help you move the driver. I’ve got to tell the other medics.”
* * *
Kieffer Dacik stared at his haggard reflection in the mirror. His face was lathered up and he had a razor in his hand, but he wasn’t moving, not his hand, not even his eyes. A chance thought had started him idly fantasizing on the pleasures of cutting his throat. He was not suicidal. The idea wasn’t one that he could ever seriously entertain, but he was short enough of sleep that he didn’t simply dismiss the errant thought and get on with the business of shaving.
Part of his mind was amused at the nonsense of standing as rigid as a statue and picturing himself lying on the bathroom floor with a new grin across his neck, while blood and shaving lather spread in a puddle around him. Foamy icebergs on a red sea. No more worries or trouble. Let somebody else drive himself mad with the situation.
His fantasy extended to imagining his aide coming in and finding him. “There he goes again, taking off without me,” he imagined hearing Captain Lorenz say.
“General?” There was a banging at the bathroom door.
Dacik blinked several times, having difficulty bringing his mind out of the reverie. That was Captain Lorenz at the door.
“What is it, Hof?” he asked finally.
“News.”
“Come in. Talk to me while I shave.” Dacik hurriedly started shaving so that his aide wouldn’t guess how long he had been standing there. The lather was already starting to dry on his face.
“The Heggies are up to something, General,” Lorenz said as he entered. “You’ll want to check out what we have on your mapboard, but I can give you the basics.”
“Well, go ahead,” Dacik said when the captain hesitated. Lorenz always looked, and often acted like a parade-ground soldier. Tall, slender, with a rigidly military carriage, Lorenz always looked as if he were waiting to pose for a recruiting holograph. Although he had seen duty with a line company through one campaign, most of his career had been spent in a series of staff assignments. It wasn’t a matter of special privilege or connections. Lorenz simply had a talent for the work, a talent that more than one commander had decided it would be a shame to waste.
“They’re pulling troops out of the lines. We can’t get exact numbers, but intelligence estimates that they’ve pulled two mechanized infantry regiments and either two or three battalions of armor.”
“Where are they headed?” Dacik asked, staring at Lorenz in the mirror.
The captain shook his head. “No word on that yet, but Colonel Lafferty’s guess is that they’re going after the 13th.” Lafferty was Dacik’s intelligence chief.
“What about that regiment that’s been chasing them?”
“No change that we’ve seen. They’re still in pursuit, but they’re on foot now, what’s left of them, and the 13th should be back in its APCs by now.”
“Any sign that the Heggies are bringing in air transport for any of the units they’ve pulled?”
“Nothing was said about that, General. I’ll call Colonel Lafferty and ask.”
“Just get him to my office. I’ll be there in two minutes. Get the rest of my staff as well. Maybe we can do something positive for a change.”
Dacik had forgotten all about his earlier fantasy.
“TELL ME what you know and how you know it,” Dacik said as he entered his office still buttoning his shirt. Colonel Lafferty was standing by the large mapboard. The rest of the staff hadn’t arrived yet.
Lafferty didn’t waste time with pleasantries either. “Information’s still coming in, sir. What we have so far is less than one-hundred percent solid, but promising.” He waited until Dacik joined him in front of the mapboard.
“Two places, here, and here.” He pointed. “On the left, we’re relying on data from bugs we planted before we drew the perimeter back. On the right, we got a patrol out during the night without them being spotted. It looks as if the Heggies are pulling units out of the line, spreading the units on either side to cover the gaps. It’s all been coordinated too precisely to give us much chance to poke through quickly during the changeover.”
“What makes you think that they’re going after the 13th?” Dacik asked. “I can think of at least two other solid reasons for pulling units back like that without stretching to conclude that they’re going to run them twelve hundred klicks. They might simply be resting troops, or they might be massing a strike force to try and break through our lines somewhere.”
“Either of those is possible,” Laffert
y conceded, “and we’re watching as closely as we can. But I don’t think that either is particularly likely right now.”
“Why?”
“As far as resting troops, it’s just not something a Schlinal warlord is likely to do until the men are so far gone that he doesn’t have any choice, and even then, he’s as apt to order them forward into an attack where they’re at. The other . . . Well, I’m going a little farther out on the limb with that. It might even come down to a toss of the coin which is more likely, but I think my estimate is right. As soon as we know where the units are rendezvousing, if they do, I’ll be able to say with more certainty, but it looks as if they’re pulling back too far to be simply massing for a strike against us. And, if that was the case, I think they’d have done it several hours earlier, so they’d be in position before dawn, not still moving in daylight. Finally, the direction they’re moving is consistent with preparations to move toward the 13th.”
“Any sign that they’re going to bring in air transport for them?”
Lafferty shook his head with considerable vigor. “Absolutely out of the question. They can’t manage that any more than we could. We’re still too near parity. They’d have to move out of range of our Wasps before they could try. In the time that would take, they could just as easily be going after them by land–be damn near where the 13th is now. They should have enough vehicles to move the mudders, and their tanks are mobile enough.”
“How many men are they pulling?”
“I can’t give you a good number on that, General, not now, maybe not ever. Infantry, I’d guess–and I do mean guess–close to four thousand, at a minimum. Maybe half again that number. That we’ve spotted so far. Plus two full battalions of armor, maybe a little more.”
“Any unit identifications?”
“None that mean anything.”
“Now the big question. Are they weakening their lines enough that we can exploit it?”
“The scattered reports I have so far suggest that the Schlinal troops still facing us have moved to a strictly defensive posture, digging in.”
“That’s not what I asked. Are we going to be able to use this to break the stalemate here?”
“I don’t know, General. Not too soon, in any case. As long as those troops are close enough that they can be brought back in time to affect the outcome, no. Once they’re nearly to the 13th, maybe. If we can find an edge, somehow. If we take too big a chance, it might give the Heggies what they need to end it.”
“Let’s get the rest of the staff in on this,” Dacik said. “I need more information.”
* * *
Dem Nimz and his remaining men had started hiking again just before sunrise. Dem pushed the pace as hard as he could. Within an hour, the legs of every man were aching from the strain, but they had covered nearly nine kilometers in that hour. After a ten-minute break, Dem stood. He didn’t have to say anything. The others got up when he did. They moved on in two columns of five, keeping about five meters between the columns and three or four meters between men in each column.
They had only been on the move for ten minutes when the last man whistled over the radio, one sharp blast. It was the only signal reccers needed. They dove for cover, facing outward, guns at the ready, waiting for more information.
“Engines,” the man said. By that time, the rest also could hear the sounds of truck engines, coming on strong.
“Can you see them?” Dem asked. He turned his head to Iook toward his left, back the way they had come.
There was a pause before the reply. “Yes. Parallel to our course, about forty meters out.”
“Keep way down,” Dem said. “Don’t let them see us.”
The noise grew steadily. Even before Dem spotted the first Schlinal truck, he could tell that there was a considerable convoy moving east at high speed. The trucks were the standard Schlinal type, half-tracks, and Dem guessed that they were going full out, near sixty kilometers per hour. Over this kind of terrain, it had to be a bumpy ride.
Carefully, Dem raised his head. He wanted a count of the trucks, and some estimate of the number of men they might be carrying.
After ten minutes, he gave up trying to count the trucks. There were several columns of them that he could see, and he had no way to be certain that he was seeing all the way to the far side of the formation.
Must be another whole regiment, he thought, his spirits sinking.
Then one of the trucks lurched to the left after hitting some obstruction, and Dem had a clear peek into the back of the vehicle. It was empty.
“I know where they’re going,” Dem whispered. He nearly held his breath until the last of them was past. As soon as the convoy was out of sight, he got on the radio. Colonel Stossen had to know about this right away. Those Heggies up ahead weren’t going to stay on foot much longer.
* * *
The “cockpit” of a Heyer APC was quite similar to the layout of a Wasp cockpit. A Heyer’s driver had two monitors on the panel in front of him, and a heads-up display directly above that, between the two periscopes that gave him a direct view of what was immediately around the vehicle. Each tread was controlled by a separate pedal, similar to the throttles in a Wasp. The difference was that in a Heyer, the throttle, for a single engine, was at the driver’s left, a lever protruding from the side of the compartment. There was no steering wheel or control yoke. The combination of throttles and individual tread transmissions took care of steering. The Heyer driver’s hands were occupied with other controls. He could even, at need, aim and fire both splat guns remotely, with separate targeting monitors high on the front wall of his compartment.
Every infantryman in the Accord’s SATs took a basic driver’s course–four hours of instruction, four hours of simulator sessions, and one hour actually driving a Heyer. Generally, one man from each squad received the “advanced” course–an additional four hours of simulator training and another two hours of actual driving. There was no extra pay to be had for the extra training, only the rather dubious prospect of someday being called upon to drive a mixer in combat.
Carl Eames drew the extra duty in first squad–volunteered for it. There was more room in the cockpit of the Heyer than there was cramped up in the rear compartment, The Heyer’s regular driver was propped up in a corner back there, wedged between two other men, sleeping off his patch. Because of the APCs lost on their decoy mission, the overcrowding in all that remained was severe. One fire team from the platoon’s second squad was crammed in with first.
The formation of Heyers didn’t move with the precision that their regular drivers might have achieved, but the 13th did manage to stay together. What they couldn’t do was move unobserved. A hundred and forty Heyers, added to the artillery and all of the support vehicles, meant that the formation was vast. The good news was that the ground was too damp for the 13th to raise massive clouds of dust. Those would have been easily visible to any of the Schlinal spy eyes in orbit, blatant enough to draw the attention of probes that weren’t looking for them.
The formation had to be obvious enough as it was, if anyone was looking.
Joe Baerclau was at his usual position next to the rear hatch of the APC. His rifle was between his legs. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. That position kept his head from banging against the bulkhead behind him, which made it as comfortable as he could hope to get in a Heyer with fourteen other men.
There was no idle chat in the compartment. After the first hour, no one had any inclination to do anything but brood in silence. Nor energy to spare. Being bounced along over open country in a Heyer was, in some ways, more draining than marching the same distance in quick step.
The breaks were too few and far between, and too short. Colonel Stossen was pushing the 13th as hard as he dared. If he had thought that the men would be able to function without the periodic breaks, he would have eliminated them completely. A g
rowing sense of urgency was driving the colonel, but he couldn’t explain it, not even to himself.
Stossen or one of his senior staff officers was in constant contact with CIC on the flagship. As many of the sensing assets as possible were dedicated to providing current information to the 13th, but there were still gaps large enough to fly an entire wing of aircraft through.
Overhead, the five remaining Wasps of Red and Blue flights patrolled, landing when they had to for fresh batteries, getting back into the air as quickly as possible. In the various support trucks, men kept their own watch on the air, alert for any possible attack by enemy Boems. Through the formation, men had Vrerch rocket launchers ready. If enemy fighters appeared, the vehicles carrying men with Vrerchs would stop immediately. Those missiles were the only ground-based defense the 13th had against air attack. Five Wasps might not be enough.
It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that Van Stossen started to relax, a little. The 13th was, if intelligence was right, far enough away from any Schlinal base for Boems to be a significant danger. They might be able to reach the 13th yet, but they would have no more than a few seconds overhead before they would have to leave to get new batteries.
“Ten more klicks, and we’ll take a longer break,” Stossen told his staff, who passed the news to subordinate commanders.
* * *
Ten kilometers stretched to nearly eighteen before the 13th found a place with decent cover available and the vehicles finally pulled to a halt, scattered over an area of nearly five square kilometers.
“Up and out,” Joe Baerclau said over his platoon frequency. “Stay under the trees as much as possible.”
He tripped the latch on the door and was the first man out. He stood next to the Heyer and stretched while the others piled out. “Remember who’s got the duty on the splat guns,” he said. “Get the essentials taken care of first. This is supposed to be a long break, but don’t count on it. And keep your eyes open.”