by Rick Shelley
Now, he couldn’t just yell “Boo!” or go “Zap! Zap! You’re dead.” This was real. The winner would live. The loser would die.
It must be just one Heggie, Ponks told himself. It made no sense, but he hoped there was only one, some luckless sap who somehow had managed to get separated from his unit. A man who could do that might get careless at the wrong time, like now. Although Eustace was looking for reassurance, he didn’t take his own thoughts too seriously. He would not close off options, would not assume that it had to be merely one man. There might be a dozen of them. But no matter how far fetched it sounded, or how many times he warned himself to expect the worse, he came back to thinking that there must only be one man–two at the most. If there were more Heggies, they would be bolder, he thought. They would be on the prowl, looking to finish the job they had started when they disabled Basset two.
Eustace stopped moving and lay in what was as close to absolute silence as he could get. He held his breath for as long as he could, and even closed his eyes for a moment, as if that might sharpen his hearing. The ringing in his ears was no longer a strident blanket over all other sound, but there was still . . . almost a hollowness, a void that might conceal the minimal sounds he might need in order to find the enemy before they found him. Eustace had no night-vision visor to his helmet. Seeing: that advantage would belong to the Heggie. Eustace had to look for his edge with the other extended sense, hearing . . . and his hearing remained questionable. Eustace’s hearing was far from perfect under the best of conditions. In certain frequencies, he was more than half deaf from his years in the artillery. Background noise would blank those frequencies out completely. Against silence, it was never that bad. Still, after that explosion . . . he couldn’t be sure yet what additional damage his hearing had suffered. The sounds he was listening for might be there, and he might not he able to hear them.
He strained against the moment when he would finally have to suck in air, hoping to get some clue to the position of his enemy first. Now that he had had some time to think, Eustace did have some idea where his own crewmen had to be. Though he had no helmet display to draw on, he thought that he had worked out approximately where they would be found. He could see the outline of the Fat Turtle in his mind. He knew where the other hatches were, and the most likely angle for each man to run as he got down. They had done quite a few evacuation drills in training, and everyone got into habits, patterns.
Finally, Eustace could hold his breath no Ionger. It was almost impossible to take a breath quietly after holding it for so long, but he did the best he could. Then he took two more breaths, less frantic. Then he held it again. Maybe this time he would hear something. With every minute that passed, his hearing should be improving, recovering from the transitory effects of the blast.
At first, he still heard nothing that was not obviously natural. Then, almost at the point when he would have to take another breath, there was just the lightest rustle. If he had been concentrating any less, Eustace might not even have noticed it, or might have written it off without thought as a normal background noise. But there was that slight rustle, not of grass or leaves in the wind, but more of cloth against cloth.
And he had the direction, or thought he did. The sound had come from farther away from the Havoc, far from where any of his own men might be.
I guess I’ve got some hearing left after all, Eustace thought. He started crawling again, more slowly than ever. He stopped to listen after each twenty or thirty centimeters, waiting for a repeat of the sound. After creeping a total of about three meters, he went absolutely still again, looking in the direction of the slight noise he had heard–perhaps ten minutes before.
This time the wait was shorter. Again, he heard no more than the slightest noise–a breath this time, too much air sucked in at once, close enough that Eustace was able to tell almost precisely where it had come from, distance as well as direction. There was a lump on the low horizon, just in front of him. The soldier lying there–not five meters away–was Iooking off toward Eustace’s right, at an angle.
Now, is it an enemy or one of my own men? Eustace asked himself. Though he thought that the figure had to be a Heggie, the question was inescapable. A mistake was unthinkable.
The helmet? Eustace stared, trying to determine if the figure on the ground in front of him wore an Accord gunner’s helmet or an infantry helmet. The only sure way to tell that in the dark would be to spot a visor–which artillery helmets did not have in the ADF–and that would be difficult if Schlinal helmets were as nonreflective as those the Accord infantry used.
Move, you bastard! Eustace thought, trying to force the figure to move by sheer willpower. But the figure on the ground did not lift his head or tum it enough to give Eustace a better view of the front of the helmet.
Eustace was too near to risk calling his crew over his helmet radio. This near a potential enemy, even a whisper would give him away. A millimeter at a time, he brought his pistol into position, ready for a shot the instant he was certain of his target. The matte-black finish of the gun would not reflect anything. There would be no way anyone would see the gun until the flash of a shot.
How’s your patience? Eustace only thought the question he directed toward the figure lying on the ground in front of him. I bet I can outwait you.
He had to.
It might have taken another ten minutes. Eustace could not check the time and he did not trust the estimates his mind waffled over. Something just short of eternity. There was simply no way to be objective about that under the circumstances.
But the head did move eventually. It raised up, no more than five centimeters. That was enough. The silhouette Eustace saw was a helmet with a face visor, and that meant that it was not Simon, Karl, or Jimmy. Anyone else had to be an enemy.
Eustace fired once, at the line where the helmet met the body. The noise of the shot startled Eustace, even though he was expecting it. But the shot was accurate. The figure in the dark jerked back and up as the RA projectile hit bone and exploded. Eustace had already fired again by then. The figure jerked once more, twisting halfway to its left. The entire head seemed to fly off of the shoulders. Then the body fell flat again and was still.
“Eustace?”
“Yeah, Simon,” Ponks replied. “I got one. I think that’s all there is, but there’s no way to be sure. Karl? Jimmy? You both there?”
He was relieved, to hear both men reply.
“You see the gun flash?” Eustace asked next. “Move toward it. Be careful though, just in case there’s more of ’em. I’ll double-check the Heggie I got and make sure he’s really done for.” There was little question about that. Without a head, the man had to be dead.
* * *
Kam Goff was in a comer of the room, puking again. He had started retching so hard that he was unable to stay on his feet even. He was down on his knees, the top of his head pressed against the corner. There was no longer anything to come out, but he couldn’t control the heaving spasms. Joe Baerclau stood by the door, not looking at Goff, but staying close. The rest of the squad was elsewhere on the second floor of the building, away from this scene. The room Joe and Kam were in was on the far side of the building from the continuing action. Joe was not particularly concerned with stray fire. That would have a lot of concrete and stone to go through to get to them.
I don’t think you’re gonna last in this business, kid, Joe thought. The shake of his head was almost unnoticeable. He could picture a variety of sequels. Goff might make a foolish move and get himself killed. He might simply go to pieces and have to be invalided out for mental problems. Or he might swallow his zipper–kill himself.
Until Goff could be moved back up to the ships, Joe knew that he would have to continue to pay special attention to the rookie, just to keep him alive until he could get help. The therapists that the ADF had were supposed to be good.
The building was secure. T
he rest of the buildings in the kaserne would soon be taken or destroyed. The heavy weapons squads of the two companies were pouring rocket and grenade fire into the three remaining buildings now. There would be no more room-to-room hunts. Twenty prisoners had been taken in this one building, and another thirty Heggies killed, in a barracks that appeared to have been home to more than three hundred. Prisoners were a problem on a mission like this one. They could not simply be killed out of hand, but they would be an impossible handicap once the strike force left the city and tried to remain undercover, intact, in the broken country west of town.
Joe thought that he could guess what Captain Ingels would do. The prisoners had all been disarmed and had their radios and body armor removed already. Once George and Echo companies got far enough away from the city, the prisoners would be turned loose to make their way back to their own people the best they could. The captain might even be creative enough to have their boots taken from them to slow them down. With any luck, that would keep them out of action for several days–finding their way home, and then recovering from a long hike with little water and no food.
It might be stretching decency, but it was more humane than shooting them.
“Take it easy, Kam,” Joe said, when Goff’s retching eased off for a minute. “Take a couple of deep breaths, then wash your mouth out. It’s over for now.”
“Won’t nothin’ take the taste of this away, Sarge,” Goff said, his voice weak. He did not tum to look at Joe, but he did lift his head up off of the wall. Joe watched while Goff followed his instructions. Kam rinsed his mouth out and spat the water on the floor. Twice. Then he took a short swallow.
“Time to get up and get a move on,” Joe said. “Sounds like the fight’s over outside. We’ll be moving out soon.” There was no harshness in his voice. This was too serious for drill instructor tactics. Joe rather liked Goff. It was too bad that the rookie seemed to be totally unfit for this work–too bad for Goff as well as for the squad, the platoon. But some people simply had no business being soldiers.
Goff got to his feet slowly, using his carbine as a crutch.
“I’ve turned out to be a total waste,” Goff said when he finally turned around. His face was so pale that Joe wondered, briefly, if he might pass out. Kam did not lift his eyes to meet Baerclau’s gaze. He bent over to reach for his helmet. It had rolled away from him, and away from the pool of thin vomit in the comer.
“I just can’t hack it, Sarge. I try, but . . .”
“Some people can’t,” Joe said. He couldn’t lie, not about that. “There’s no shame in it. Let’s just get through this mission, kid. You’ll be okay then. They got folks to help people, back up on the ship.”
“I should live so long.” Now, finally, Goff raised his head so he was looking straight at the sergeant.
“Don’t give up on yourself. You’ll make it if you just hang in there. Remember, it’s never until after the shit is over that you react. Not until it’s over. That’s all that’s important.”
It was important. Joe knew that, but he was far from sure that he could find a way to convince a mixed-up rookie. That could be even more important, vital.
Before either man found anything else to say, there was an explosion that they could not ignore, a blast so massive that it shook the building and precluded any immediate possibility of conversation.
“Secondary explosion,” Joe said, knowing that it was unlikely that Goff would hear. “Fire must have reached the arsenal.”
After the echoes started to fade, he said, “Put your helmet on. Let’s go see what’s happened.”
* * *
Fires had spread beyond the barracks compound, blown by a strengthening west wind. There were a few dozen civilians running about in the distance, trying to organize the local fire brigade to contain the flames before they could get completely out of hand. There seemed to be only a small area of buildings clustered close enough together beyond the kaserne fence for the flames to spread to. Porter City was, for the most part, a sprawling city with plenty of open spaces. Where the homes of local citizens were, starting perhaps a half kilometer from the east side of the kaserne, the homes were set off in the middle of large walled-in grounds.. The walls surrounding those haciendas were of stone or pseudo-adobe for the most part. They would never burn, and the distance between perimeter walls and houses was generally enough to isolate the residences from the flames, even in a moderate breeze.
By the time Joe Baerclau Ied his men out of the building they had taken, the two nearest of the other barracks had been almost completely consumed by flames. What had not been leveled by the initial explosions was fully engulfed in flames. The rest of the buildings in the compound were all on fire. And over a space of a hundred meters, two buildings beyond the fence had also started to burn. Those buildings were wood frame, a style primarily found on the less populous colony worlds.
On the parade field in the center of the kaserne, the men of George and Echo companies had marshaled their prisoners and relieved them of weapons and radios. The recon platoons were set out around the area to provide early warning of any new enemy movement. Captain Ingels could not Iose sight of the fact that his men were outnumbered by a hopeless factor if theSchlinal garrison brought all of its local resources to bear against them. This kaserne was one of many in Porter City, and not the largest.
Ingels and Lieutenant Vickers of George Company took time for a face-to-face meeting with their first sergeants and executive officers.
“We’ve done what we came for,” Ingels said. “It’s time to get the hell out of here before the enemy regroups and comes after us in force.”
“Back into the boonies?” Vickers asked.
Ingels nodded. “It would be nice to simply head back the way we came–we’d know that we had good cover and all the rest–but the Heggies might figure that out too easily. So we head south, then tum west once we’ve put a few klicks behind us.”
“That puts us farther from Wasp cover, sir,” First Sergeant Iz Walker said. “Even here, those Wasps don’t have much time to give the Heggies hell before they have to head back to the plateau for fresh batteries. Much farther off and they won’t be able to help us at all.”
“The Schlinal commander has probably calculated exactly how much time the Wasps can spend here by now,” Vickers said. “He’ll probably expect us to head toward the plateau to take advantage of our air cover. He might even decide to slip troops in west or northwest of here to ambush us.” Vickers looked to Ingels to make sure that his evaluation was the same as the captain’s.
Ingels nodded again. “He could put us in the middle that way, cut us off completely . . . if we were going that way.” He shrugged. “Or he might actually guess our plans. It’s a gamble either way. Once we’ve put a little distance behind us, we may be able to bend around to the north.” He shrugged again, the gesture came too easily. “Or we may get instructions to go even farther in the other direction to spread the Heggies out more. Or in case we get our recall.”
“I have a suggestion, sir,” Walker said.
Ingels faced him squarely. He was too good a commander not to listen seriously to the suggestions of his first sergeant.
“The weapons and wire we’ve taken off the Heggies. I think we should cart it all off with us. This safari takes much longer, we could run completely dry of ammo for our zippers. The Schlinal wire won’t fit the Armanocs, so we’d need their rifles as well.”
“Our people going to have any trouble using the enemy rifles?” Ingels asked.
“Very little,” Walker said. “Their aim might be off a tad, but the Schlinal weapons aren’t so very much different from ours–not to operate, at least.”
“Okay, good idea. We’ll do that. Too bad we couldn’t liberate some food as well.”
“It appears that their food stores went up in that blast,” Walker said. “I had men look in the one bu
ilding we captured more or less intact.”
“What are our casualties?” Ingels asked.
“Too heavy,” Walker said, looking to Vickers before he looked at his own commander again. “The count isn’t final yet. I haven’t heard from either of the recon platoons, and there are still a few of our own platoons, in both companies, that haven’t given us their figures. But, so far, the count is seventeen dead and thirty wounded. Maybe a half dozen of the wounded aren’t going to be able to walk out on their own. They’ll have to be carried. We gonna be able to get in medevac for ’em, sir?”
“We’re going to try, if the Heggies give us a little breathing space. But it may be morning before we can get a shuttle in. Maybe late morning. Anybody hurt too bad to hold on that long?”
“Not that I know of, sir,” Walker said.
“We have a count on prisoners?” was Ingels’s next question.
“Roughly 130,” Wilker said. “Call it twenty less if we leave behind the ones that are wounded badly enough that they won’t be any use to the enemy for the next few days.”
“We leave them behind, all enemy wounded,” Ingels said without hesitation. “We’re not equipped to deal with our own casualties, let alone theirs. We’ll leave them here where the Heggies can find them. Give them what first aid we can, of course.”