“Fire,” Singh snapped.
We fired, then ran forward under cover of the explosions. The enemy had dug a network of trenches, half-hidden by the undergrowth; they popped out and opened fire as we appeared, only to be cut down savagely. A number threw grenades of their own, then turned and ran for their lives. Someone was screaming over the command net about no mercy, about killing them all, but we did our best to ignore them. The handful of prisoners we took were dragged off to the AFVs, where they would be held until we could hand them over to the intelligence staff.
“Move the rest of the convoy up the road,” Webb ordered. He seemed to have taken over command - or, at least, everyone obeyed his orders without question. The nominal commander kept his head well down. “Can the damaged vehicles be repaired in five minutes?”
“No, sir,” Lieutenant Spook said. With a name like that, he really should have been in intelligence, but he was too clever and thus overqualified. “They’re beyond repair, unless we get them to a workshop.”
“Blow them,” Webb ordered.
“But captain,” one of the army officers objected. “They’re expensive.”
“And right now they’re a goddamned liability,” Webb snarled. “There’s no point in leaving them here and no point in trying to ship them home, not when we just don’t have the time to handle them. Strip them of anything useful, then toss a grenade into the cabs and get rid of them.”
I stood guard as the damaged AFV was stripped, then fused. An AFV doesn't have the solid armour of a Landshark tank, yet it’s still damn difficult to destroy without heavy weapons. I half-expected the captain to order us to take it out with an antitank missile, but he settled for removing everything of value and burning out the control circuits. In theory, a clean-up team would pick up the remains and ship it home for recycling, but in practice it was probably stuck there until doomsday. We pushed the wreckage off the road, then abandoned it. There was no point in trying to do anything else.
“We could set an IED,” Lewis suggested. “Give the enemy a nasty surprise when they come to call.”
“Too much chance of killing children,” Webb said, as we mounted up again. “All we can do is remove everything that might be of value and abandoned the rest.”
I glanced up as the helicopters swooped back over us, as if the pilots hadn't been too damn scared of HVMs to do their goddamned jobs. Everyone says that pilots live lives of luxury and that their uniforms are made of silk ... and while that isn't true, they do tend to put their aircraft ahead of everything else, including supporting the forces on the ground. It didn't make much sense to me - Moidart should have been capable of turning out attack helicopters, AFVs and an infinite supply of ammunition - but we had to ship most of it in from out-system. Someone, somewhere, had probably won the contract for supplying the military forces on Moidart and had no intention of allowing any local competition.
And to hell with the military necessities, I thought, coldly. At least the locals should have been able to supply their own requirements, although it didn't look as though they were even doing that. What’s the point of using simple vehicles and basic weapons if we can't even have them produced locally?
The drive from Charlie City to the FOB shouldn't have taken more than a couple of hours, but - thanks to the rebels - it ended up taking over ten. They didn't set another ambush, thankfully; they settled for sniping at us, setting the occasional IED and trying to wear us down with constant alerts. We had a very nasty moment, as the sun was setting, when we practically stumbled over a huge IED some enterprising bomber had concealed right next to the road. Lewis told us, afterwards, that it was easily big enough to wipe out most of the convoy if it had detonated at the right time. By the time we rolled into the FOB, which was surprisingly large for its location, we were all tired and in desperate need of sleep. Even Singh was starting to look a bit wan.
“Get the trucks into the hardened shelters,” he ordered, “and then get into the makeshift barracks.”
The company guarding the FOB showed a level of skill and professionalism I hadn't come to expect from the imperial army. Even the handful of Redshirts attached to them seemed remarkably competent (naturally, I resolved to sleep with one eye open; they were just too competent to be trusted.) They'd organised a giant hanger - the FOB was a former airbase, built for some purpose that had been long forgotten - into sleeping quarters and provided a handful of blankets and other pieces of bedding. It was better than we’d expected; luckily, we'd brought our own bedrolls along as well as ration bars. I didn't hear any grumbling about the food as we lay down, closed our eyes and went to sleep. They told me the FOB was shelled twice in the night, but I wasn't even remotely aware of it.
We wiped ourselves down the following day - there were showers, but water was strictly rationed - and prepared ourselves to drive out again. This time, there were just three platoons of marines; we’d be badly outnumbered, but at least there wouldn't be any imperial army troops getting in the way and screwing up when we came under attack. Webb took command at once, then ordered us back through the gates and onto a dusty road leading north. It looked far nicer than the highway, yet it was much more oppressive. The enemy could easily bury a pressure plate IED under the road and wait for us to drive over it. And the farmlands closed in, providing no shortage of cover for the enemy.
It was a surprise, at least to me, when we didn't take any fire at all. We drove though a couple of tiny hamlets - the inhabitants eyed us warily, but didn't show any interest in talking - and onwards towards Kristin, a small town to the north. The sweat started to trickle down my back as the sun rose higher, shining down on our position. It was almost a relief when a handful of poorly-aimed shots cracked over my head and vanished somewhere in the undergrowth. I swung around, looking for the shooter, but saw nothing. The only thing I could do was hold my fire and wait.
“Probably a local yokel,” Lewis said, when no further shots were incoming. “He wouldn't have stuck around for a fight.”
I nodded, slowly. A local yokel - a piece of marine slang - is a local inhabitant who refuses to do the smart thing and stay out of a firefight, either because he thinks it’s a challenge to his manhood or because he’s trying to impress someone. He’s rarely directly connected to the insurgents, but he serves their purpose and wastes our time. We’d studied the many different types of insurgent at the Slaughterhouse and I think the local yokel is the most infuriating and frustrating. There was no way to get anything through his skull, save by the most extreme measures. He normally got himself killed comparing dick-sizes with highly-trained soldiers.
And then his family has a grudge against us and a reason to go to the insurgents, I thought, as we rolled onwards. We kill an idiot who fires at us and wind up with a dozen new enemies.
“Keep a sharp eye out for trouble,” Singh warned, as we approached the town. The farmland was slowly replaced by grasslands, where a number of cows and sheep chewed contently, untouched by human wars. I smiled when I saw a sign, clearly designed by a child, advertising PENNY’S STY. A large pig hid behind it, watching us with beady eyes. “This is a prime spot for an ambush.”
We rolled past the final farmhouse, weapons at the ready. A small girl stared at us, then turned and ran inside. An older woman watched our vehicles expressionlessly; behind her, a man who looked old enough to be my grandfather ignored us, as if he could deny our very existence. I didn't really blame him. We’d brought war to his town.
No, it wasn't really our fault. The planet’s king had sold his people out, twice. But it was only human of him to blame us ...
... And besides, it was much easier to blame the off-worlders for the nightmare that had consumed his world.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Humans are, of course, social creatures. There is an understandable reluctance to believe the worst of one’s own society, no matter its flaws, while being willing to believe the worst of every other society. (Certain worlds throughout history have reversed that t
rait, but they rarely lasted longer than a generation; no one would fight to defend a society they had been taught to hate.) On Moidart, most of the population did blame Hammersmith Corporation, the Empire’s military or the Grand Senate ... choosing to ignore King Fredrick’s role in selling mining rights to off-worlders. It suited their social obligations to believe as much.
-Professor Leo Caesius
Kristin was a ghost town.
No, not entirely, but the closer we got to the firebase, the fewer people we saw on the streets and the more buildings that were clearly abandoned. A number showed the tell-tale signs of bullet marks, others had been destroyed; no one had bothered to clean up the rubble, let alone try to replace them. The firebase itself had started life as a school, but the windows had been removed and covered with metal netting, the walls had been augmented by prefabricated barriers and a dozen murder holes had been cut through the stone. It looked like the old FOB, I reflected as we were escorted through the gates, but worse.
“Captain Webb,” a newcomer called. He wore a dirty uniform, suggesting he was actually a fighting officer. “Welcome to Firebase Gamma - or, as we call it, Hell.”
Webb grinned. “It’s good to see you again, Bill,” he said. “How long has it been since Tarbush?”
“Too long,” Bill - Captain William Thompson, Imperial Army - said. “We’ve been stuck here for the last six months.”
“You poor bastards,” Webb said. He and Thompson had served together before; indeed, Thompson had once had quite a high reputation, for all that he was a soldier rather than a marine. “Do you have a briefing prepared?”
“Stow your gear, then join us in the schoolroom,” Thompson said. “I’ll meet you down there in twenty minutes.”
We checked our sleeping quarters - we were expected to sleep under the desks, it seemed - and then headed down to the schoolroom. It looked surprisingly like Webb’s briefing room, right down to the large map pinned to the wall. Kristin was larger than I’d realised and, more awkwardly, was surrounded by a dozen satellite towns. Thompson was expected to patrol fifty square miles with ... with what? How many men were assigned to the firebase?
“Thank you for coming,” Thompson said, as he strode into the room. “I’ll give it to you straight. We’ve been pinned down here for the last month and we’ve come frighteningly close to running out of supplies more than once. Last time, we only got one truckload of ration bars from the FOB, thanks to the enemy hitting the convoy with antitank rockets. I actually recommended the firebase be abandoned. We're not achieving anything here.”
Webb frowned. “It’s that bad?”
“Worse,” Thompson said. “I have four platoons under my direct command, thanks to constant attrition and ... and higher command stealing some of my subordinate formations for other firebases. Suffice it to say that we have no control at all outside the range of our guns and we come under heavy attack whenever we leave the base. The townspeople hate us, the entire area is seeded with IEDs and there’s very little we can do to change it.”
He sounded ... broken. Later, I discovered that Thompson had managed to embarrass his commanding officer and he’d been punished by being dispatched to Kristin, along with half of the men under his command. His superiors hoped, I think, that he’d either defeat the rebels or lose so badly he could be dishonourably discharged from the army. Caught in a bind, he'd settled for pulling in his horns and holding the firebase against all comers.
“The base itself has been attacked too, several times,” Thompson added, slowly. “We’ve come close to running out of ammunition completely twice; it took all of my powers of persuasion to convince higher command to make emergency shipments of weapons and ammunition. I don’t think I need to tell you what would have happened if the enemy had managed to overrun us. They came far too close to succeeding last time.”
I swallowed. Running out of ammunition hadn't seemed a reasonable possibility in Charlie City - we weren't far from the spaceport, where millions of rounds were stored - but here? I could see it happening. So could the rebels, if they had eyes and ears in the FOB. They’d have to know just how close the firebase had come to running out of ammunition ... and they could shape their attacks to force Thompson and his men to expend their limited supply. I knew precisely what would happen if the firebase did run out of ammunition; the rebels would overrun the base, kill everyone inside and walk off with thousands of credits worth of useful equipment. It would be, at the very least, a major embarrassment to the governor.
Webb stood. “We will commence patrols tomorrow,” he said, firmly. “I want us to make our presence felt throughout the town, then we can start extending our control into the farmlands.”
“That won’t be easy,” Thompson warned. “The warlord controls everywhere outside our guns.”
“We can but try,” Webb said. “If nothing else, at least we have some additional firepower.”
The enemy, as it happened, had plans of their own. We were woken up in the middle of the night by a salvo of incoming fire, followed by a series of gunshots as enemy snipers probed our defences. Thompson’s men rationed their fire carefully, only shooting back when they had a clear target; Corporal Stevens and his mortar platoon were more enthusiastic about firing off shells, but the enemy mortars refused to be silenced. We stood to, preparing to repel an offensive, as the enemy fire intensified and then faded away. Our night-vision gear allowed us to identify a number of men watching us, but we couldn't engage them unless we actually saw weapons in their hands. I was starting to understand just why Thompson and his men were so demoralised.
“We don’t know they’re dickers,” Singh pointed out.
“They’re out and about in the midst of a firefight,” Lewis said, coldly. “They’re either dickers or idiots.”
We didn’t get any more sleep that night, even as the sun slowly appeared on the far side of the mountains. There was no sign of any enemy bodies, no proof we’d hit anything ... I gritted my teeth as I surveyed the wrecked buildings, realising just how easy it would be for the enemy to slip close. As long as they were careful, and they quite evidently were, they wouldn't have any trouble getting into firing range without being detected. We stuffed ration bars into our mouths, then prepared ourselves for our first foray out beyond the walls and into Kristin. Thompson’s men called out all sorts of pieces of advice as we checked and rechecked our weapons and body armour. None of it seemed particularly helpful.
“I should be commanding this march,” Singh said, as we prepared to depart. “Captain ...”
“I need to get a feel for the terrain,” Webb replied, firmly. “There isn't any other way to do it.”
I smiled. It did seem foolish for the captain to put his life at risk, but he didn't really have a choice. Terrain is rarely what it seems on the map, something I hadn't understood until I’d been issued a map that was both completely accurate and remarkably misleading. Given the dangers caused by a REMF trying to micromanage operations from the rear, I supposed we should be damn grateful that Captain Webb wasn't anything of the sort. Besides, we admired him all the more for sharing the risks.
The gates opened, slowly, and we inched outside, weapons at the ready. It was already warm, but I wasn't sweating because of the heat. The deserted and ruined buildings had looked sinister enough in the darkness, yet they somehow managed to look worse in the cold light of day. I wondered, absently, just what had happened to the owners as we walked past them, careful to keep our distance from anything suspicious. The enemy would have to be mad to plant IEDs in a populated town, but they’d already shown a frightening lack of concern for civilian casualties.
“There’s too much rubble around,” Webb noted, as we kept moving. I was sure we were being watched by unseen eyes. “Stay well away from it.”
“They could be counting on that, sir,” Lewis said. “If they’re using it to store weapons as well as cover ...”
“Something to bear in mind,” Webb agreed.
We inched our
way down to the market, which was already coming to life ... if a torpid kind of life. A handful of old men were sitting at one end, playing a game that looked like an odd combination of chess and risk; several younger children were running around, kicking a football from place to place. They looked old enough to be on the farms, I noted; I wasn't sure why they were here, unless they were waiting to go into school. Where was the school now we’d taken the building and turned it into a firebase? A handful of other children were sitting against the wall, half-hidden in the shade. I peered at them and realised, to my horror, that they were some of the casualties of the war. A young boy was missing his legs, a young girl had an arm that ended in a stump, a teenage male had a cloth wrapped around his eyes ...
“Davidson, offer to help them,” Webb ordered, quietly. “See if we can do something to make their lives better.”
The younger children vanished as soon as Davidson approached, while the blind teenager shook his head, keeping his mouth firmly closed. I wondered, absently, just what had happened to blind him. It couldn't have been our fault, could it? But there were some riot control weapons that caused blindness, if pushed to maximum. It wasn't meant to last, yet some victims were unlucky. We’d been told not to use it except as a last resort.
First To Fight (The Empire's Corps Book 11) Page 35