The 18th Race: Book 02 - In All Directions

by David Sherman

  “I’ve ridden an amphib before, Sergeant,” Greig said.

  “Yeah, I imagine you have. But have your men?”

  Greig nodded, conceding the point. “Only some of them.”

  “Now, fifty men you say? That includes your weapons crews?”

  “Yes, Sarge. The weapons squad is thirteen men.”

  “Right. Split them up. I want half of them in one Scooter, the rest in another—the weapons take a lot of space. Your platoon has three squads?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “Put one and a half squads in each of the Scooters. Put your platoon sergeant and radioman with half of your weapons squad in the rear Hog. You and the rest of your weapons ride up front with me. That’ll give just about everybody room to stretch out a bit. The normal load for Scooters and Hogs is more than that.

  Got it?”

  “Got it, Sarge.”

  “With all due respect, Sir, it’s Gunny, not ‘Sarge’.”

  Chapter 4

  Midway Between Millerton and the Forward Base Under Construction

  “What was that?” Second Lieutenant Greig yelped when the Hog he was in jolted violently.

  “I’d say we just got hit by something,” Gunny Stewart said calmly as he reached for the comm link to the convoy commander’s compartment and listened as the lieutenant in it gave orders to the vehicles. He could also hear the commander of the lead Hog, the one he and Greig were riding. What he heard gave him warning to grab a handhold to steady himself as the armored vehicle began jinking and jerking violently in evasive maneuvers.

  The Hog shuddered as its thirty-millimeter main gun spat a burst of explosive rounds. A lighter tinkling testified that the Hog’s fifty-caliber guns were also spraying the surrounding area. He faintly heard firing from the other vehicles in the convoy.

  Grieg didn’t have the same warning Stewart had, and was thrown from his web seating when the Hog began its violent maneuvering. The gunnery sergeant reached out an arm to grab Greig’s jacket collar and jerk him back onto his seat.

  “Strap in and hold on, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Th-thanks.”

  Reverberating pings and thuds told of enemy fire hitting the Hog, but nothing penetrated the vehicle’s armor—yet.

  “Do you have comm with your people?” Stewart had to shout to be heard above the bangs and rattles of incoming and outgoing fire, and the roaring of the maneuvering Hog’s engine.

  “I ran a comm check as soon as we boarded,” Greig shouted back.

  “That was then. If you still have comm, tell them we’re under attack. But hold tight, we’ll get them out of this.” He continued listening, unable to see outside—the armored vehicles had no windows or periscopes in the troop cabin. The vehicles had periscopes for the vehicle commanders and drivers, and the Hogs for the gunners, but that was all the visibility anybody had with the hatches closed.

  Crew Cabin, Hog 1-3-B

  “Damn, but they’re fast!” shouted Corporal Donald L. Truesdale as he swiveled his quad-fifty, spraying fifty-caliber rounds at the side of the hill the aliens were scrambling down. The jinking and jerking of the Hog’s evasive maneuvers constantly threw his aim off, and most of his bursts went high or wide or plowed into the dirt in front of the aliens.

  “Fire shorter bursts, Truesdale,” Staff Sergeant William E. Shuck, the vehicle commander, ordered.

  “Git me more ammo,” Sergeant Phillip Gaughn called to the loader, Lance Corporal Fernando L. Garcia.

  “It’s in your bin,” Garcia shouted back; the automatic-filler bin next to the thirty-millimeter main gun was filled almost to the top with rounds. At Gaughn’s current rate of fire, it would be a few more minutes before Garcia needed to top it off.

  “Run ‘em over?” the driver, Sergeant James I. Poynter shouted at Shuck.

  Shuck looked through his periscope and saw, behind a thin screen of slender trees, a knot of about a dozen Dusters fifty meters ahead and slightly to the side of the Hog. Some of the Dusters were firing rifle-like weapons, others were assembling what looked like a crew served weapon that might be big enough to do damage to the Marine armored vehicles.

  “Smash ‘em!” Shuck snapped.

  “Yahoo!” Poynter bellowed. He stomped on the accelerator and yanked the steering yoke to the left, aiming straight at the cluster of aliens, who looked up, startled at the sudden roar coming at them.

  The aliens started to scramble out of the way when the Hog was ten meters away, but not all of them made it. Four or five got sucked under the air cushioned vehicle and were shredded by the gravel and debris being flung about by the powerful fans that lifted the Hog off the ground. So did the big weapon they were mounting.

  “Turn about,” Shuck ordered, and Poynter twisted the yoke, spinning the Hog around on its axis. “Head for those small boulders!” he said when he saw an area covered with stones up to the size of a soccer ball. “Squat on them.”

  “Aye aye,” Poyter shouted gleefully. He sped the Hog to the small field of boulders. There, he vectored the fans to blow straight down and applied enough power for them to lift the Hog an extra dozen centimeters.

  Large rocks and small boulders sprayed out in all directions from under the vehicle. Many of them slammed into Dusters unable to dodge them, tearing off limbs, tails, heads, plowing holes through bodies.

  “What’s happening?” Greig shouted. He let go of a handhold with one hand to grab Stewart’s arm to get his attention and shouted his question again.

  “It sounds like the Dusters are getting slaughtered,” Stewart shouted back.

  Moments later the only sounds were the roars of the vehicles’ engines and the blasting of their weapons; there wasn’t any more incoming fire from the Duster ambush. The convoy didn’t stop to deal with the Duster casualties.

  “What about the enemy bodies?” Greig asked. “Should we just leave them there like that? Shouldn’t we collect their weapons and check the bodies for documents?”

  “Let ’em police up after themselves,” Stewart said. “Besides, if we unass from these vehicles, any of them still able to shoot will get some of us. And they never seem to have documents. Even if we could read their chicken scratching.”

  Advance Firebase One, Under Construction

  The scene that greeted Greig and Sergeant First Class Quinn when they dismounted from the armored Hogs was one of controlled chaos. Thick lines of dirt berms were piled man-high on the west side of the construction area, opposite the direction the convoy had come from. Ferrocrete cladding had been laid on some of the berms, and a machine was busily laying ferrocrete on another section of dirt berm. Other machines were piling more sections of earthen berm, yet more were digging holes. In the already-finished sections it looked like finishing touches were being put on the entrances to bunkers that were built into the berm. Men in dirty uniforms bustled about, supervising the machines delivering materials from one location to another, or supervising other men. There were the tops of a few more bunkers inboard from the berm. A large tent stood in the middle of the complex. A spindly tower sprouting antennas, with rotating dishes near its top—Greig identified them as radar, infrared, and other detection devices—was twenty meters to one side of the large tent. A more substantial looking tower topped by a basket with a man in it was an equal distance on the other side of the tent. A spike rose from the side of the basket, flying the flag of the North American Union. In all, it looked like the base when finished would cover more than twenty acres.

  Greig found the site surprisingly quiet despite all the activity.

  “You must be Greig,” a middling-big man said, extending a hand to shake. His uniform was as dirty as everybody else’s. Given his age, probably mid-fifties; Greig would have take him for a chief petty officer had it not been for the gold oak leaves on his collar points. “Welcome to Firebase Anonymous.”

  “Yes, sir,” Greig said. He started to salute, then extended his hand to shake.

  Stewart made the introductions. “Mr. Greig, t
his is Lieutenant Commander William Harrison. He’s the engineer in charge of building this base for you.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir. Anonymous?”

  Harrison grinned. “I don’t know how you do it in the Army, but in the Navy and Marines, we name our forward bases after heroes, usually dead ones. We don’t have either yet, so it’s up to you to name this place. So unless you brought a name with you, we call this place Firebase Anonymous One.”

  “Ah, yes, sir. I’m glad to hear that. I mean, no heroes or dead.”

  “We’ve been here for five days,” Harrison said, clamping a hand on Greig’s shoulder to lead him toward a finished section of berm. “And this is all we’ve had time to accomplish so far. But now that you’re here, I can take my people off security duty and put them to work constructing, and the pace will pick up dramatically. I see that Chief Cronin has your people well in hand. He’ll see to getting them settled in and chowed down.” He waved a hand at the tent. “That’s our temporary mess hall. One table is designated as officers’ and chiefs’ mess. You and your platoon sergeant will join my top people and me for meals—allowing for who’s on duty.”

  Looking back at his platoon, Greig saw a burly man standing next to SFC Quinn and gesturing, evidently giving information and instructions. Looking around more, he asked, “What about quarters? Where are they?”

  “We spent a couple of days roughing it, bedding down on the ground. Since then we’ve taken to sleeping in the bunkers. Except for the ammo bunkers, that could be damn dangerous. We’re still roughing it, the cots we were promised haven’t been delivered yet.” He shrugged, as though cots were irrelevant. “Defensive positions right now are more important than quarters, so we’re concentrating on the berm and fighting positions. Plus ammo bunkers, of course.”

  They reached a finished section of berm and Harrison ducked into a bunker, drawing Greig along with him. The entryway had an open blast door on the outside, closely followed by two ninety-degree turns, and another blast door, also open, on the inside. An aperture, wide enough to allow three men to fire rifles through it at the same time—or one rifleman plus a machine gun—was in the center of the wall facing outward. Against each side wall, an open bin with dividers served as lockers for the bunker’s occupants. A thin mattress lay on top of each of the lockers. A second bunk was half a meter above the lower. The floor sloped toward a corner of the back wall, with a sump hole at the lowest point.

  “A grenade sump?” Greig asked.

  “You got it. So far the Dusters haven’t used grenades, or any other hand-throwable explosives that we’ve heard of. But you never know. Better to be safe.

  “Now, look out here.” Harrison guided Greig to the aperture.

  Greig stooped slightly to see through the opening in the front of the bunker. He saw scorched ground stretching three hundred meters to a line of scraggly trees, the face of a thin forest. Small boulders, none larger than an athletic ball, speckled the barren ground.

  “The day before we got here,” Harrison said, “the Marines bombed a square kilometer with Dragon’s Breath.”

  Greig whistled. Dragon’s Breath was a fiery weapon so horrendous it was banned for use against people. It was, however, still used sometimes to clear ground, sometimes even enemy-held cropland, although that use was generally frowned upon, especially if there was a civilian population that might starve from loss of the crops.

  “Nobody’s going to get close to Firebase Anonymous without us knowing they’re on their way.

  Just then Harrison’s comm squawked at him, “Incoming from the west, fifteen klicks.”

  “Let’s see what that’s about,” Harrison said, heading for the bunker’s exit. Outside, he headed at a brisk pace for a bunker that barely showed above ground level. “Command post,” he said over his shoulder to Greig, who was scrambling to catch up.

  The CP bunker was easily twice the size of the fighting bunker Greig had just seen. A long table along one wall held workstations, not all of which Greig immediately recognized—he thought some of them must have construction or engineering functions that he wasn’t familiar with. A man and two women were bent over three of the stations.

  “What’cha got for me?” Harrison asked, leaning in to look over the shoulder of one of the techs.

  “Three aircraft,” she answered. “Unfamiliar design. But they look human.”

  “Defense?”

  “Only one AA is operational,” said another tech. “It’s locked onto the nearest aircraft.”

  “They’ve started orbiting, sir,” the first tech said.

  “Comm, any contact?” Harrison asked the third tech.

  “Not on any Navy or Marine freq. I’m trying Army now.” Seconds later, “Bingo.”

  “Put it up.”

  “Aye-aye.” She touched something and a voice came out of a speaker.

  “. . .ee Bee base, this is NAUA Mike India Papa det Nine Bravo, orbiting twelve klicks from your location. Do you hear me? Come on, guys. I know you see me, you’ve got a lock on my lead aircraft.”

  Harrison picked up a mike. “Mike India Papa, this is Charlie Bravo Actual. Where the hell’d you come from?”

  “Charlie Bravo Actual, been doing our job—reconnoitering. What do you think?”

  “Advance to be recognized, Mike India Papa Bravo.” Harrison put the mike back down. “I’ve seen the Dusters and heard their voices. No way one of them could speak good human. Were you expecting a Mobile Intel platoon?”

  “Yeah, but I thought they’d follow us on the ground, or already be here when we arrived.”

  Fifteen minutes later three P-43 Eagles, bristling with sensor antennas and weapons, were settled in the middle of the compound and the twenty enlisted members of the first platoon of the 9th Infantry Division’s mobile intelligence company were forming up in front of their aircraft.

  A tall soldier with blackened lieutenant’s bars on the collars of a cruddy shirt walked to where Harrison and Greig stood in front of the CP bunker. “Sir, I’m First Lieutenant Archie Miller,” he said, waving a casual salute at Harrison. “I’m in nominal charge of that band of reprobates you see behind me. We’re first platoon, 9th Mobile Intel Company.”

  “And I’m Lieutenant Commander Bill Harrison. I’m in charge of building this here base. Until it’s finished and I turn it over to the Army, I own it. That makes me your landlord. This,” he jerked a thumb at Greig, “is Second Lieutenant Ted Greig. He’s base personnel, responsible for security here, and for running patrols out there. You and yours are TAD here.” Temporary Additional Duty, on loan, not permanent personnel. Harrison gave a wry smile at being labeled as Temporary Additional Duty—on loan, not permanent personnel. “That sort of makes him your superior officer, even though you outrank him.”

  “That so?” Miller stuck a hand out for Greig to shake. “Glad to meet’cha, Louie.”

  Greig took Miller’s hand, and didn’t flinch at Miller’s crushing grip. He knew his hand would be sore later, but he wasn’t going to give the MI officer the satisfaction.

  “So, Bossman, Whaddya want us to do first?” He gave Greig’s hand a final squeeze before releasing it.

  “How about a report on what you found? While you’re doing that,” he looked at Harrison, “I imagine the commander can have someone show your people where to stow their things.”

  “Chief Cronin’s taking care of that right now.” Harrison nodded in the direction of the MI enlisted men, where Chief Petty Officer Cronin was already taking them in hand. He sniffed. “While he’s at it, I’m sure he’ll also introduce them to the shower point. If you’ve been out there snooping and pooping, I expect they’d like to sluice off the accumulated crud. After that, it’ll be chow call for you and yours.

  “In the meantime, let’s get you settled in. You can begin briefing Mr. Greig while you’re getting your gear stowed and yourself cleaned up.”

  Lieutenant Commander Harrison billeted First Lieutenant Miller and his platoon sergeant, Master
Sergeant James H. Bronson, in a half-finished bunker, then pointed the direction to the officers’ and chiefs’ shower point. It was smaller and more centrally located than the enlisted shower, but was otherwise the same: a canvas-walled enclosure with water fed from a fuel drum set above it on a scaffold. While Miller was stowing his gear, Lieutenant Grieg got ready for his own shower; he hadn’t had a chance to clean since the transfer from the Juno Beach. He was finished and dressed by the time Miller arrived.

  When both were clean and in fresh uniforms, Miller accompanied Greig to the mess tent. Some of the Mobile Intelligence troops were filtering in after having showered themselves, as was a squad of Greig’s platoon. Unlike their officers, the enlisted men didn’t sit together, but stayed with their own. In the manner of enlisted men of all armies, they didn’t sit close to the officers.

  The first thing Miller told Greig was, “We’re tied into the satellite net. Everything we found and recorded got uploaded to the Navy intel people as we got it. Now it’s your turn to find out.” Harrison joined them as he began giving his briefing.

  “We flew around for two days,” Miller said between chews of his ham steak. “Every couple of klicks one of our birds would make a stop-and-go touchdown. Sometimes a team would drop out.” He gave Greig a penetrating look. “You understand why we made a lot of touch-and-goes without letting anybody out, don’t you?”

  Greig nodded. “If the Dusters were observing your flights, they wouldn’t know whether or not you were letting a patrol out. That’s a basic tactic for reconnaissance teams.”

  “Good. Maybe you’re not as dumb as most leg LTs.”

  “Careful there, Lieutenant. Mounted Infantry is a lot smarter and tougher than legs.”

  Miller grinned, and washed down a mouthful of reconstituted mashed potatoes with a drink of strong Navy coffee. “I know that, Ted. Just wanted to make sure you do.” He stuck out a hand. “Call me Archie.”